Curtis Sliwa Declines to Commit to NYC ACC Reforms
Sliwa campaigned on animal welfare but never put it in writing and, like Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani, waved off TSNY reader questions.
The Scoop New York is a website and newsletter covering the movement for a true no-kill New York State, from BUF to BK. NYC ACC KILLS, published by TSNY, enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.
Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn
It’s October 24, 2025. This is The Weekly Poop.
This week was the final deadline for New York City mayoral candidates to respond to the TSNY candidate questionnaire, which I formulated with help from an A-team of advocates who in all probability know a lot more than they’d like about the non-profit contractor currently known as Animal Care Centers of New York City, and its silent and violent overlords at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene [sic].
The campaign of Democratic nominee, front-runner and billionaire jump-scarer Zohran Mamdani did not reply. Nor did the Andrew Cuomo “campaign,” which naturally directed press queries to the ratfuckery-on-demand agency run by Cuomo suckerfish Rich Azzopardi, who to his credit is fighting like hell against the dying of the light emanating from his favorite star’s gassy orbit. Unlike Melissa DeRosa, another phenomenally pleasant Cuomo wagon-hitcher who seemingly couldn’t decide if she was in or out this time and whose figurative presence alongside Azzopardi always brings to mind nothing so much as baby great whites fighting one another to the death in utero. If you’ll excuse the funhouse-mirror metaphors. That one, too.
With incumbent-cum-Tracy Jordan come-to-life Eric Adams having lost the campaign chicken game to the Dark Carpetbagger, the third* and final candidate (*and the second legitimate one) in this Municipal Election Like No Other is Republican Curtis Sliwa, long-famous as lead red beret of the Guardian Angels vigilante group. Such was Sliwa’s notoriety during the bad old days that Stay Puft Marshmallow Man aside he may have been the first thing this child of the rural south knew of New York City. Nowadays Sliwa is known best for the beret and his cats, whom he correctly credits for improving his mental and even physical health.
By his own telling, Sliwa came to cats relatively late, having been introduced to the magic thanks to his wife, Nancy. Inevitably, election coverage has generally from day one fixated on this detail of Sliwa’s eventful life, as access types can’t get over a grown man living in a tiny apartment with six cats and his spouse, which would be the other thing Sliwa and yours truly have in common and is perfectly normal and fine. [Let it out. No judgments here. — Ed.]
As pointed out to me by his campaign media director upon receipt of the TSNY questionnaire, Sliwa is running on the “first-ever Independent Protect Animals Line.” Given his lean-in and very public advocacy style, a survey from a news outlet — even an upstart one run by a nobody [A relative nobody; don’t sell yourself short. Though you are that too … — Ed.] — that focuses solely on the city’s homeless cats and dogs would seem a gift. That it wasn’t received as one was a sign as subtle as the Bat-Signal.
All year long, readers invoked Sliwa in TSNY social media mentions as The One. The One mayor — The One politician — who will finally and for all time rescue homeless cats and dogs from the medieval dungeon that is New York City’s public animal “shelter.” Because he said he would.
If it worked that way, no one would still be talking about ACC reform in 2025.
The key word in the above image, grabbed from Sliwa’s campaign site, is “plans.” No, ACC isn’t buried behind one of those buttons. Yes, I looked.
I believe Curtis Sliwa cares about cats. He can rattle off stats about life spans among cat colonies. He knows DOH/ACC is a scandalously brutal, barely-functional bottomless pit of public resources. He clocks the distinction between extermination and “euthanasia” and how devastating it is when DOH and ACC exterminate cats and dogs — “beloved friends,” in Sliwa’s words — in front of those trying to save them. He gets it.
So why is it that when asked to commit to DOH/ACC reform, Sliwa chose not to? And why wouldn’t he pledge to examine housing policies that discriminate against renters with pets, including if not especially when the landlord is New York City? It’s not as if protecting puppies and kittens would piss off the constituency. Since Trump fled, anyway.
Looks like someone schooled NYCHA on animal cruelty and white-hot disdain for New Yorkers. This you, Nolan? [Pffft. Easy pickings. — Ed.]
The neglect is non-partisan. “The one thing we agree on!™️” is accurate, but not as it’s intended. The same city that despises companion animals in public housing despises them at animal control. The city run by faux Friends Of The Animals who never STFU about their hand-holdy l-u-u-v for the kitties and puppies but refuse to improve ACC in any way as they for personal political benefit lock in the status quo for decades to come at mind-blowing expense to the same taxpayers who have for 30 years begged them and their forbears to act as well as bloviate.
But vanity ballot lines are propaganda, not policy. Making vague pledges to finally realize a no-kill NYC (which New Yorkers have heard a few times ICYMI), unleash cat colonies on Central Park rats and make Gracie Mansion a sanctuary look nothing like studied reforms — which Sliwa is obviously more than capable of developing — and a lot like zany Lucy Ricardo schemes Ricky would yell at her in Cuban about.
“Do I believe his intent would be to stop killing animals? Yes,” said a veteran city advocate whose name we won’t reveal due to their relationship with the Sliwas. “So I think he’s sincere about that. I think his wife is sincere about cat rescue. But, you know, they’re politicians.”
Sliwa is indeed a natural at New York CQB politics. His unflinching refusal to exit the race for Cuomo’s sake, as if he’s the washed lifer who couldn’t lock down his own party of convenience in his own hometown, is top-notch political theater. Mamet himself couldn’t have scripted it.
Sliwa wasn’t looking for an opportunity to present a thoughtful course of action for DOH/ACC reform to an outlet that would publish it without know-nothing happy talk and submoronic puns. (“Things at NYC ACC are about to get ruff for Risa!” Two seconds, tops.) It’s the shit sandwich handed him by Cuomo and greasy Monopoly man mustache-twirlers like that tennis ponce with diarrhea of the mouth and the plagiarist wife that was the gift.
We offered to publish a statement from the Sliwa campaign that accounts for the dissonance between his rhetoric and his refusal to commit to DOH/ACC reform. Here is that statement, from campaign spox Daniel Kurzyna:
“Curtis Sliwa is the only candidate in this race who treats animal welfare like a real priority, not a talking point. His wife, Nancy, is a longtime rescuer. She created the independent Protect Animals ballot line, and Curtis has been crystal clear that under his leadership, New York City will be a no-kill shelter city and animal abusers will finally go to jail. If you care about animal rights, there’s only one choice in this election.”
Sliwa has taken to saying that he and Cuomo, at too-long last staring down his own political death process, have reversed roles. That Cuomo is the Islamophobe radio guy and he, Sliwa, is the politician.
Unfortunately for the animals’ sake, he’s not wrong.
Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:
You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.
New York City is not enforcing the state’s puppy mill ban. Wonder why that is.
Governor Kathy “Affordability” Hochul, who refuses to raise taxes on the richest NYers, vetoed a bill to protect not-rich NYers from crooked pet insurance industry practices due to budget concerns. Affordability!
Related: Hochul also nixed a bill to require public agencies like NYC DOH/ACC to complete FOIL requests within 60 days, as opposed to within whenever FOIL gatekeepers feel like obeying the law. Transparency!
Related: Jamestown, seeing “a lot of animal cruelty cases,” may not be able to swing the $6,000 a year it pays to outsource animal control ops that the over-stressed local shelter can’t cover. L-u-u-v!
Related: A group of lowlifes attempted to break into a rescue in Hamburg, south of Buffalo, leaving staff forced to raise yet more $$$ to upgrade their security system. L-u-u-v!
A reward is available for info on the perp(s) who stabbed a dog and left him/her to die in Syracuse. (The dog is recovering.)
A modest proposal: Aforementioned NYCHA evicts pets on the regular from its collapsing buildings due to aforementioned NYC hatred of NYers with animals. Rather than condemning four-legged evictees to DOH/ACC it may be less traumatic all around if NYCHA enforcers went ahead and applied the needle themselves in the pets’ soon-to-be former homes. “At NYCHA, we bring End of Life Services to you!” Think about it.
What if Jimmy Van Bramer had spent his decade+ on the NYC Council addressing the city’s pet slaughter problem rather than risking New Yorkers’ lives for votes and policing where dogs do their business?
“Cat shelter advocates leave North Hempstead meeting after argument with board”
Finally: Godspeed, Tater in the Catskills.
This week on social media
Food recalls
U.S. FDA has announced no new pet recalls this week.
Check here for info on prior FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on FDA advisories and outbreaks.
