Curtis Sliwa, the bombastic creator of New York City's Guardian Angels anti-crime patrol group, lost his last election battle with Mayor Eric Adams by almost 40 points.

This time around, the red beret-wearing Republican believes the race is very much up for grabs.

Even in a city where Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans, the math is different from the two-man race in 2021. With three polarizing candidates potentially splitting the Democratic vote, the 71-year-old hopes to maintain the 28% he secured last time around while picking up some folks from the other side of the aisle on his message that he's best positioned to handle crime in the city.

Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state lawmaker and democratic socialist with a thin resume, is the Democratic nominee after pulling off a massive upset of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary this summer. Cuomo, who was run out of the governor's mansion four years ago after sexual harassment allegations, has rebooted his campaign as an independent candidate. Meanwhile, Adams, wounded by a federal bribery case and the Trump administration’s extraordinary intervention to drop the charges, skipped the primary altogether and is instead campaigning for a second term as an independent.

“Zohran obviously is very unique. He's way to the left, but then again, Cuomo and Adams, listen to the way they talk. They're Zohran-lite," he told The Associated Press. "I will be the alternative."

Sliwa is hoping to ride to victory on crime, an issue that helped Adams, a former police captain, win the pandemic-era 2021 election.

This year's Democratic primary was dominated by discussions of affordability, but Sliwa believes concern over crime is almost equal in voters’ minds to other issues.

His pitch to voters includes hiring more police, among other things.

Sliwa's Guardian Angels — a band of beret-wearing citizens — patrolled graffitied subway cars and the rough-and-tumble streets starting in the late 1970s, at a time when crime was rampant. The city, by every measurable metric, has gotten much safer. So far this year, the city saw the fewest shooting incidents and shooting victims in its recorded history, as well as declines in major crime categories, according to police.

But in Sliwa's telling, crime is rampant, especially in the Bronx.

During campaign stops, Sliwa recounts how on “June 19th, 1972 I was shot five times with hollow point bullets on the orders of John Gotti Sr. to John Gotti Jr. and the Gambino Crime Family.” (Sliwa had been blasting the elder Gotti on the radio. John “Junior” Gotti was charged with ordering the shooting but multiple juries deadlocked and prosecutors eventually gave up the case.)

Sliwa, like President Donald Trump, has long been a larger-than-life New York City tabloid figure. His campaign has shades of some national Republican talking points, with Sliwa bashing the state's bail laws and welcoming the National Guard to what he calls high-crime areas.

He's known to many New Yorkers as a host on local radio dating back to the 1990s — for many years co-hosting a show with left-leaning civil rights lawyer Ron Kuby. More recently, he's become an animal-rights activist, and his large collection of cats featured prominently in his first campaign for mayor.

AP video shot by Ted Shaffrey