Sliwa wants TWU to help in his fight against horse carriages

He’s making hay of the issue.

Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa announced Tuesday that he will attempt to enlist members of the Transport Workers Union in his push to convert controversial horse carriages in Manhattan to electric-powered ones.

“Everybody who’s a member of TWU Local 100 is now going to be lobbied personally by me, the Guardian Angels and members of my campaign,” Sliwa said at a press conference near Central Park. “This barbaric industry must come to an end.”

The animal-loving City Hall hopeful said that TWU members would not lose their jobs if his hobby horse policy is implemented because they’d be able to operate the electric alternatives in an amended, stable job.

“We’re going to lobby the union members, we’re going to convince the men and women, the brothers and sisters in solidarity with these horse carriage drivers, that the jobs will remain,” he explained.

“We don’t want to eliminate these jobs. We just want to repurpose these jobs,” he added. “That means these men and women who are the horse carriage drivers will be able to be the drivers of the new electric carriages.”

Sliwa — who lives with more than a dozen cats in his Upper West Side studio apartment and featured them in a recent campaign ad –– also insisted that doing away with horse carriages wouldn’t hurt the Big Apple’s economy.

“Nobody is going to come to the conclusion that, ‘Oh, there are no horse-drawn carriages, so guess what, I’m not coming to New York City to spend my vacation dollars, my tourist dollars.’ Of course they’re going to come,” he said.

But the TWU’s head dismissed Sliwa’s attempt to convince its members to turn against horse carriages.

“Curtis is a lying cat hoarder, pure and simple,” said TWU President Tony Utano.

Sliwa’s announcement comes after a carriage horse was injured when it crashed last week into the back of a BMW sedan in Midtown. In August, The Post reported that an emaciated and wounded carriage horse had been forced to walk the streets of Manhattan for at least a week.

Carriage horses became a key issue in the 2013 mayoral election, when leaders of New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets, NYCLASS, contributed more than $900,000 to de Blasio’s campaign and a nonprofit backing the mayor’s agenda. NYCLASS got back in the saddle during the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary, funding ads that attacked eventual fourth place candidate Andrew Yang.

Additional reporting by David Meyer