It’s 9:30 p.m. on election night on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and Curtis Sliwa is telling his crowd of supporters that his campaign spoke for animal lovers and the emotionally disturbed.

Polls in New York’s mayoral race had closed a half hour prior, with Zohran Mamdani quickly declared the victor , and while the Republican candidate and longtime city fixture only offered a passing concession—“so we have a mayor-elect”—he took the broader opportunity to reflect on his idiosyncratic presence on the edges of public life for several decades now. In the closing days of the campaign, Donald Trump had come out in support of Andrew Cuomo , who ran as an independent, in an effort to head off Mamdani’s momentum, and claimed that Sliwa, whose calling cards include his red beret

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