Covering third-party politics for a quarter-century accustoms one to the accusation that such-and-such marginal electoral candidate is a "spoiler," queering what would be the results of a one-on-one contest between the front-runners. What's new in New York City this fall is that the putative turd in this mayoral punch bowl is not some splinter/indie rando, but the Republican Curtis Sliwa.

"Just Walk Away, Beret!" thundered the cover editorial in Tuesday's New York Post , nodding both to the candidate's trademark haberdashery and the age-demographic of those panicking over Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani. Sliwa's longtime boss at WABC Radio, the politically influential Red Apple Media CEO John Catsimatidis, declared Monday that while "Curtis would make the best mayor of all the candida

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