Tirschwell Exits NYC Mayor’s Race, Calls City Politics ‘Broken’

Tirschwell Calls NYC Politics ‘Broken,’ Falls Off Mayoral Ballot

Sonali Basak

16 Apr 2021, 01:12 AM IST

(Bloomberg) -- Sara Tirschwell, a Wall Street veteran who had been running as a Republican candidate for mayor of New York City, dropped out of the race Wednesday after her campaign failed to gather enough voter signatures to qualify.

“The way things work in NYC is broken - systems that favor insiders and those with money versus those who are desperate for the chance to change their fate,” she said in a statement on her campaign website. “I ran to change that paradigm - to fundamentally alter the death by 1,000 cuts manner in which our city treats its residents and businesses.”

Tirschwell didn’t immediately respond to a request for further comment.

Tirschwell drops out of a race that’s had a large number of Democrats running for office, but a far more limited slate of Republicans. In New York City, Democrats outnumber Republicans seven to one.

Prior to her mayoral run, she had worked at investment firm TCW Group Inc. before she filed a harassment suit alleging that the company had wrongfully terminated her. She said last month that she had raised $625,000 for her campaign.

Candidates are required by the city Board of Elections to gather a certain number of signatures to qualify for the ballot. Tirschwell said she hadn’t met the threshold. She claimed rival Republican candidate Fernando Mateo, a small business owner, “targeted her access to the ballot” by disputing some of the voter signatures she collected. Manhattan, Bronx and Queens Republican committees all backed Mateo.

“Fernando’s people thought it would be better for democracy for New Yorkers to have fewer choices,” Tirschwell said in a statement Wednesday.

She said she planned to vote for rival Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.

Sliwa, a talk show host, had previously called on Mateo to “call of his henchmen” in an attempt to block Tirschwell. He called her departure from the race a “sad day” for the Republican Party and said he will work with her to “take the city back from political insiders.”