A New York political strategist with a historical past of working for each Democrats and Republicans has launched an excellent PAC to spice up GOP mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa’s marketing campaign within the last weeks of this yr’s heated race for Metropolis Corridor.
That makes Vote Widespread Sense the primary tremendous PAC backing Sliwa on this yr’s election cycle, which has already featured heavy exterior spending for the opposite two predominant mayoral hopefuls, Democratic front-runner Zohran Mamdani and unbiased candidate Andrew Cuomo.
The PAC launch comes although Sliwa’s polling third within the Nov. 4 mayoral election, behind each Mamdani and Cuomo.
Allies to Cuomo and others have urged Sliwa to drop out of the race as a way to maximize the ex-gov’s possibilities towards Mamdani. Sliwa has refused to behave on these calls.
Vote Widespread Sense’s largest donor to date is Molly LLC, a company entity that chipped in $300,000 late final week, Murray mentioned. He didn’t instantly have information on who’s behind that LLC, and there have been no state or metropolis information instantly accessible for that entity.
Murray has pumped $15,000 of his personal cash into the PAC, too, and one other $25,000 was not too long ago contributed by Caryl Ratner, a former actual property govt who has been an enormous donor to native conservative causes, spending tons of of hundreds of {dollars}, for example, on ex-Congressman Lee Zeldin’s unsuccessful GOP marketing campaign towards Gov. Hochul in 2022.
On Saturday morning, Murray’s PAC aired its first tv advert, a 30-second hit deriding Mamdani’s “destructive socialist policies,” together with his previous requires defunding the NYPD. Murray mentioned his PAC has plunked down $250,450 on the advert, which can air on native TV stations via Wednesday.
“The choice is clear: More radical decline or Curtis Sliwa … as mayor, he’ll support the NYPD, put cops back in subways and fight for you,” a voiceover says within the advert, which options pictures of Sliwa shaking fingers with voters.
A spokeswoman for Mamdani, a democratic socialist, didn’t instantly return a request for touch upon the brand new PAC. A spokesman for Sliwa didn’t instantly return a request for remark, both.
Curtis Sliwa’s new tremendous PAC marketing campaign video on the Vote Widespread Sense NY web site. (votecommonsenseny.com)
Mamdani, who’s polling because the clear favourite to win the Nov. 4 contest, has distanced himself from his personal previous calls to defund the NYPD and says he now helps conserving metropolis police funding flat.
Sliwa has persistently positioned third in polls of the mayor’s race, with Cuomo rating because the runner-up to Mamdani.
Nonetheless, Murray insisted the election is a “two-man race between Sliwa and Mamdani” following Mayor Adams’ exit from the competition final month.
“Curtis Sliwa is the only one who can beat Mamdani,” Murray mentioned.
PAC spending has reached historic ranges on this yr’s mayoral race, with rich people pouring tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} into unbiased expenditure teams backing Cuomo and Mamdani. Not like candidate campaigns, PACs don’t have contribution and spending caps, permitting them to siphon limitless quantities of money into elections to attempt to affect outcomes.
The most important PAC working within the 2025 mayoral cycle, by far, is Repair the Metropolis, which is boosting Cuomo’s bid to change into the following mayor. Based on its newest filings, Repair the Metropolis has raised greater than $28 million and spent greater than $23 million on adverts and different efforts to spice up Cuomo and oppose Mamdani.
Initially Revealed: October 12, 2025 at 2:07 PM EDT
