Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa proposed Monday placing one of the recently removed Christopher Columbus statues that stood in neighboring cities on Staten Island.
Along with monuments in Columbus Circle, Astoria, on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, and Cadman Plaza, “Staten Island, which some people call ‘Staten Italy,'” deserves an effigy of the 15th-century explorer, the Guardian Angels founder told reporters ahead of the Columbus Day parade in Manhattan.
“I want to reach out to Trenton or Newark, those cities that have put their Columbus statues on mothballs, so Bridgeport or New Heaven, and and say, ‘Hey, as mayor, give us that statue.’ You’re not doing anything with it. All it’s got is cobwebs and mothballs in warehouses, and you’re paying for it,” he said. “We’ll take it off your hands.”
Connecticut’s Bridgeport and New Haven as well as Newark, Trenton and Atlantic City in New Jersey have recently yanked their controversial Columbus statues.
Sliwa, who touted his Italian heritage on his mother’s side of the family, listed Hyland Boulevard, New Dorp Lane and Mount Loretto — site of the annual Staten Island Italian festival — as possible locations for the bust. Between 30 and 40 percent of Staten Islanders claim Italian ancestry, according to recent estimates.
During the informal press conference on Fifth Avenue before the Columbus Day Parade — in which Mayor Bill de Blasio marched after he was excluded from last year’s festivities — Sliwa said he hoped the mayor received a cold reception.
“I’m looking forward to Bill de Blasio being booed,” the mayoral contender replied when asked what he was looking forward to about the event.
“He has the chutzpah … to show up in this parade, that fugazi Italian that he’s always been,” Sliwa — who faces heavy favorite Eric Adams in the Nov. 2 general election — fumed. “He got elected saying he was 100 percent Italian, now watch the Italians boo him!”
De Blasio has had a strained relationship with the Big Apple’s Italian American community.
In 2019, his wife, Chirlane McCray, removed Mother Frances Cabrini, America’s first canonized saint, from a list of honored women under consideration for a statue in the five boroughs. In a radio appearance, “A Bronx Tale” actor Chazz Palminteri called the first lady a “racist” for snubbing the Italian American icon in the “She Built NYC” competition.
The next year, de Blasio sparked outrage from his fellow Italian Americans, when the city public school system scrapped Columbus Day, replacing it with Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Last year, de Blasio was excluded from participating in New York’s major Columbus Day event. The head of the Columbus Citizens Foundation told The Post that the mayor was not invited to speak at 2020’s modified virtual event after the cancellation of the in-person version due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“No, he wasn’t invited,” Angelo Vivolo, chairman of the foundation that hosts the annual Columbus Day Parade, told The Post at the time.