Top aides and associates of former Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani are backing Andrew Cuomo over GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa for mayor, The Post has learned.
Joe Lhota, the Republican candidate for mayor in 2013 who previously was a deputy mayor under Giuliani, told The Post he’s supporting Cuomo.
He also served as then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s MTA chief.
“It’s a choice between a proven manager, a socialist and a fruit loop,” said Lhota, who has since switched his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat.
“Of course I’m going to be with Andrew.”
Anthony Carbonetti, a Republican who served as Giuliani’s chief of staff at City Hall and was a senior advisor to his 2008 presidential campaign, also said he’s pushing Cuomo.
For any chance to defeat Democratic nominee and front-runner Zohran Mamdani, Cuomo, running as an independent, needs to siphon votes from Sliwa.
“Curtis is a great New Yorker. But the numbers aren’t there for him to win,” Carbonetti told The Post.
He said he supported Sliwa four years ago, but the stakes are too high now with democratic socialist Mamdani the favorite to lead America’s largest metropolis.
Sliwa, he said, can only play spoiler.
“I don’t want a socialist in charge of a $116 billion city budget,” Carbonetti said.
He said Mamdani’s proposed fare free bus program will turn the vehicles into “mobile homeless shelters.”
Meanwhile, former GOP US Attorney General Mike Mukasey under then-President George Bush , and a longtime Giuliani pal, endorsed Cuomo in an op-ed posted posted online by the Staten Island Advance Thursday .
Mukasey said he’s been a loyal Republican voter for 40 years — but this election is different.
“The first rule for Republicans must be that our city should not be put at risk of irreversible damage, which it would be if Mamdani is elected,” Mukasey said in his column.
“The second rule is that we must act on the best information we have so as to follow the first rule. That information says that Cuomo is the most viable alternative to Mamdani, particularly after Adams has withdrawn,” he said, referring to Mayor Eric Adams announcing this week he’s not seeking re-election.
The maneuvering comes at a time when President Trump himself has dumped on his party’s nominee, Sliwa, the Guardian Angels founder.
“Look, I’m a Republican, but Curtis is not exactly prime time,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends” last month.
He said Cuomo would have a better shot than Sliwa at defeating “communist” Mamdani in a head-to-head contest.
The Sliwa campaign dismissed support from Giuliani’s network for Cuomo.
“Joe Lhota has been a Democrat since 2016. He worked for Andrew Cuomo,” said Sliwa campaign adviser Rob Cole.
“Big deal,” he said.
Giuliani, 81, mayor from 1994-2001, and who has served as a personal lawyer to Trump, has not backed a horse in the race for mayor yet, his spokesman said.
Recent polls show Democratic nominee Mamdani with about a 20-point lead over Cuomo, running on the independent “Fight and Deliver” ballot line, with Sliwa coming in a distant third. But Mamdani is getting less than 50% of the vote.
There has been no general election survey released yet since Adams announced his exit from the race.
