In a stunning on-air meltdown Wednesday morning, Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa stormed out of his longtime home at 77 WABC Radio, publicly severing ties with the conservative station after its owner and top hosts urged him to end his uphill campaign for New York City mayor.

“You will never see me in the studio of WABC ever again,” an enraged Sliwa declared live on air, moments before walking out mid-segment. The Guardian Angels founder, whose fiery personality helped make him one of New York’s most recognizable political provocateurs, accused the station’s management of betraying him to boost Andrew Cuomo, the scandal-plagued former governor mounting an independent run.

The blowup came during a tense exchange with morning host Sid Rosenberg, who pressed Sliwa to bow out to clear a path for Cuomo to consolidate anti-socialist voters against Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, a progressive Assemblyman backed by the Democratic Socialists of America.

Station owner John Catsimatidis, a billionaire Republican donor and supermarket mogul, has also publicly called for Sliwa to withdraw, arguing that a divided right-of-center vote would hand City Hall to Mamdani. “Curtis should do the right thing for New York,” Catsimatidis told the New York Post earlier this week.

Sliwa fired back on air, accusing WABC of turning against him. “I feel personally offended by friends and colleagues at WABC,” he fumed. “They have become Always Broadcast Cuomo. They’ve been calling me selfish — are you out of your mind?”

For years, The Curtis Sliwa Show has been a staple of WABC’s populist programming, known for its mix of streetwise humor and political bombast. But Sliwa has been off the air since launching his insurgent mayoral campaign earlier this year, returning occasionally for interviews and guest spots.

His departure underscores a growing rift within New York’s fractured Republican circles, where loyalty to Trump-era populism increasingly collides with establishment pragmatism. Sliwa, a fiery anti-crime crusader who won the GOP nomination last month, has refused to yield to pressure from Catsimatidis and other Republican power brokers who see Cuomo — despite his Democratic past — as the only viable alternative to Mamdani.

“I’m not quitting, I’m fighting,” Sliwa told reporters outside WABC’s Midtown studios after his walkout. “The people of New York deserve a choice — not a backroom deal between billionaires and washed-up politicians.”

The standoff comes as polls show Mamdani leading with roughly 42% of the vote, followed by Cuomo at 31% and Sliwa trailing at 17%, according to a recent Emerson College survey. Cuomo’s allies have been lobbying conservative donors and media figures — including WABC’s roster of right-leaning hosts — to rally behind him in a last-ditch effort to stop the city’s first socialist mayoral victory.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)