Curtis Sliwa, the founder and CEO of crime prevention organization “The Guardian Angels,” entered the final debate of the 2021 Mayoral election cycle polling at a measly 25%. His opponent, Eric Adams, the former police department captain, and current Brooklyn borough president, held an astronomical 36 point lead, polling at 61%. With the November 2nd election just one week out, Adams, the Democratic nominee, appeared poised to seize City Hall. The debate did little to change that.
The debate began with a request for Eric Adams to clarify his controversial support of stop-and-frisk, a policy deemed unconstitutional in 2013 for its targeting of Black and Brown. Like each time he has previously been questioned about stop-and-frisk, Adams promised that his usage of the policy would be “the proper use.”
Sliwa, who was asked if he disagreed with what Adams had said, responded by questioning Adams on his comments from earlier that day. “My opponent, Eric Adams, just this morning on The Breakfast Club said that he had met with ‘gang leaders with bodies,’” said Sliwa, before asking, “Did you stop, question, and frisk them? Did you report them to the police?”
As Bill Ritter, the debate’s moderator, restated the question in an attempt to guide Sliwa back on topic, Eric Adams let out a toothy grin, followed by the confident, deflecting chuckle we often see from him. Sliwa has been much laughed at by Adams. He’s been called a “clown” by Adams, who, in this debate, told Sliwa he was, “acting like [Adams’s] son when he was four years old.” Much of the debate devolved into a game of insults, with much of the name-calling coming from Adams and directed at Sliwa.
Sliwa, the Republican nominee who has faced an uphill battle to win the mayoral office in a blue city, needed to breach the wall Adams has set up: a collected, “above all nonsense” demeanor. At times, Sliwa was successful in this, forcing Adams to resolve to low-level attacks on Sliwa’s child support payments (an attack Sliwa called “scurrilous”) but still, Adams has remained difficult to fluster. Perhaps this is due to Adams’s recognition of Sliwa’s tactics and his pledge to resist Sliwa’s “pull(ing) [him] into a slugfest.” Or, perhaps Adams has never considered Sliwa a legitimate opponent at all. After all, even a week before the election, Adams’s Twitter bio reads: “next Mayor of New York City.” Adams has made it clear that he considers Sliwa no match for him, labeling his campaign “buffoonery.”
Sliwa’s attempts to link Eric Adams and unpopular mayor Bill de Blasio in voters’ minds were numerous, calling the mayor, “[Adams’s] friend and teammate,” (twice), “[his] political advisor,” and “[his] partner,” (four times). Still, Adams remained collected and refused to speak poorly about de Blasio. When asked to give de Blasio a rating, Adams followed Sliwa’s “F” with a more-generous-than-surveys-say “B-”.
In a race seemingly already decided, Sliwa needed a spark he couldn’t and didn’t get through his faced-paced, energetic, confrontational approach. And although he occasionally slipped up, Eric Adams did just what he needed to do to eliminate any chance of an upset. He remained largely level-headed and neglected to validate Sliwa as a candidate. Adams’s routine, confident chuckle indicated to voters that he considered Sliwa’s debate performance and campaign as a whole was more an act of entertainment than one of substance, a notion likely to be supported by the results of the election.
