In a zone straddling Brooklyn and Queens that turned out overwhelmingly for Zohran Mamdani within the Democratic major, Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa has cultivated a devoted following. From Greenpoint to Ridgewood, he appeals to many locals’ pursuits as property homeowners, their Catholic values and, above all, their shared identification as Polish Individuals.
“Most individuals don’t understand that I might be the primary Polish American mayor this metropolis has ever had,” Sliwa stated in an interview with Radio Rampa, a Polish-language outlet in Brooklyn. “We don’t train Polish American historical past. Principally, Polish persons are invisible on this nation.”
Sliwa mentions his Polish roots in choose interviews, telling the story of his grandparents on his father’s facet, who immigrated from Poland, and citing his father as his best affect — the person who instilled in him a deep respect for Polish-born navy figures who performed necessary roles within the American Revolution, notably Tadeusz Kościuszko and Casimir Pulaski.
On the remaining candidate debate, Andrew Cuomo corrected Sliwa’s pronunciation of Kościuszko — the namesake of a bridge spanning Brooklyn and Queens that Cuomo rebuilt — and when prompted by a moderator to greet New Yorkers in a language aside from English, Sliwa reached for Italian, the opposite half of his heritage.
However on Radio Rampa, Sliwa knew his viewers: He lamented that New Yorkers don’t pronounce the names Kościuszko and Pulaski accurately.
Roughly 48,000 New Yorkers converse Polish at house, in response to Census knowledge, with about 25,000 registered voters amongst them.
At an early voting web site in Ridgewood, one Board of Elections employee admitted quietly that she prays for Sliwa to win. One other, Karen Kender, a retired insurance coverage worker who’s Polish American, stated she distributed marketing campaign supplies on her personal time.
“I acquired palm playing cards from Bob Holden’s workplace,” she stated, referring to the Queens Council member, a self-described “widespread sense” Democrat who’s nonetheless backing Sliwa. “I usually work right here, however I’m not working this election season.”
Kender determined to volunteer for Sliwa, since she has identified him as a candidate for a few years.
She recalled a resident yelling at her to “go to Center Village and Maspeth,” close by areas of Queens identified for Republican leanings.
“However I dwell in Ridgewood,” she replied. “There are pockets of Republicans on this neighborhood.”
For Kender, social gathering affiliation outweighs ethnic heritage.
“Regardless that I’m a Trump supporter and (Sliwa) shouldn’t be not, he’s out with the folks,” stated Kender, who was sporting American flag earrings. “If you happen to go on Fb, you see him. He’s at each occasion, virtually all around the subways.”
She cited bail reform and the COVID-19 nursing house scandal throughout Andrew Cuomo’s time as governor as points cementing her help for Sliwa. As for Mamdani, presently an Meeting member from Astoria, she is “not even contemplating him,” calling him a socialist.
Although their numbers have declined in conventional enclaves like Greenpoint, Polish-Individuals stay seen throughout northern Brooklyn and western Queens. Rising rents pushed many households east to Ridgewood and Maspeth, the place greater than 10,000 folks of Polish descent now dwell. These areas overlap with Holden’s district and stay strongholds for socially conservative, property-owning voters.
‘This Is a Hipster Place’
Discovering Polish voters on the early voting web site in Greenpoint, as soon as the guts of “Little Poland,” proved troublesome. Two middle-aged males talking Polish exterior the early voting web site in McCarren Park laughed.
“It is a hipster place,” one stated. “You received’t discover Polish folks right here anymore.”
Requested how they voted, the boys waved away the query.
Nonetheless, Sliwa continues to court docket the neighborhood, working a marketing campaign advert at Radio Rampa and filming marketing campaign messages at Polonaise Terrace, a former banquet corridor on Greenpoint Avenue that’s slated for actual property improvement.
His attraction reaches some youthful Polish Individuals.
Adam Czartoryski, 23, who works in actual property, stated a lot of his Polish-born family and mates help Sliwa.
“They type the silent majority,” he stated.
Czartoryski recalled that he was 15 when he first noticed Sliwa throughout the Pulaski Day Parade — an occasion Sliwa nonetheless attends yearly together with his spouse, Nancy, who can also be of Polish descent.
Czartoryski was impressed by Sliwa’s acquainted pink beret and assured presence on the parade that he has led repeatedly as grand marshal.
“My mother stated, ‘He’s Polish — he’s gonna run for mayor in the future,’” Czartoryski stated. “When he did, I already knew who he was.”
Czartoryski describes Sliwa as “a clean-cut New Yorker — a man who’ll get the job finished.” He stated he admired Sliwa’s dogged refusal to drop out of the race, within the face of stress from the Trump administration and a few native Republicans to clear area for Andrew Cuomo to run a one-on-one race as an impartial towards Mamdani.
“He’s cussed — like a variety of us,” he stated, calling {that a} Polish characteristic.
Czartoryski stated he additionally appreciates Sliwa’s historical past as founding father of the Guardian Angels and survivor of a 1992 assassination try by mobsters.
“When Giuliani grew to become mayor, he launched cease and frisk, and crime dropped,” Czartoryski added. “I’ve a variety of mates in regulation enforcement who say they’re frightened about what occurs if Mamdani or folks like him achieve extra affect.”
At Café Riviera on Manhattan Avenue, proprietor Margaret Tokarska, who for many years has run the Polish bakery with a giant framed picture of the Pope, smiled when requested about Sliwa. “I don’t know a lot about him,” she stated, “however I feel he’d be man to run this.”
Her reasoning, she defined, is usually alongside social gathering traces.
“Republicans are pro-life. They’ve spiritual values,” she stated. “They’re towards all this gender stuff. That’s sufficient.”
Tokarska owns each her café and the flats above it — a sample typical of Greenpoint’s older Polish neighborhood, which incorporates many landlords and small enterprise homeowners. Many work in development, small enterprise or actual property. Almost half of Polish New Yorkers personal their properties, a determine nicely above the citywide common. But incomes are comparatively modest: the median Polish-American household earns about $104,000, under the citywide white family median of $130,00.
The Polish-American trajectory in New York Metropolis matches the basic white-ethnic immigrant path of upward mobility, stated John Mollenkopf, director of the Heart for City Analysis on the CUNY Graduate Heart, with immigrants arriving within the metropolis as blue-collar employees, saving to begin companies, shopping for property, establishing parishes after which shifting to the suburbs.
‘The Entire System’s Messed Up’
Jessica Stanczak, 35, who helps run her household’s Paradise Florist in Greenpoint, stated she attended a Sliwa occasion on the bar Juicy Lucy’s. “He made a pleasant speech,” she stated, however admitted she couldn’t recall a lot of it. “I used to be busy on the bar ingesting.”
Nonetheless, she shares the considerations voiced by different Sliwa supporters: security and homelessness, which means the presence of homeless folks within the neighborhood, which she finds disturbing and unsafe for long-time residents.
One goal for pushback is a males’s shelter on Apollo Road underscores this sentiment. Greater than 2,000 residents signed an on-line petition opposing the undertaking again in 2021, and the shelter has remained a recurring matter in native Fb teams because it opened.
Regardless of these points, Stanczak identifies as non-political. “That entire system’s tousled,” she stated. A neighbor, overhearing the dialog, nodded in settlement. Each expressed a way of political alienation — not strongly partisan, however disconnected from what they understand as a distant metropolis authorities.
Sliwa’s attraction resonates with this sentiment. Mollenkopf famous that each Sliwa and Mamdani — although ideologically opposed — share an analogous trait in fashionable politics.
“They spend time on the streets,” Mollenkopf stated. “They perceive man- and woman-on-the-street sentiment.”
For Czartoryski, that high quality mattered throughout the primary mayoral debate.
“I feel Sliwa and Mamdani truly had dialog,” he stated. “Mamdani offers off a JFK vibe — younger, making an attempt to be politician. However I simply can’t relate to him.”
However Sliwa? “I can.”
