Mayor Run Tease Upends New York Politics

When a celebrity businessman hints he’ll run for mayor to stop a “communist” and threatens to pull hundreds of millions out of New York City, it says a lot about how broken people think the system is.

Story Snapshot

Dave Portnoy is openly mulling a run against New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and asking if he can win.
Portnoy brands Mamdani a “communist” who wants to “seize the means of production,” while Mamdani and his record tell a different story.^[2]
Portnoy threatens to move Barstool Sports’ headquarters out of New York if Mamdani’s agenda continues, raising real worries about jobs and investment.^[1]^[3]
The fight taps into wider anger on both left and right about elites, Islamophobia, and a city government many feel ignores everyday people.^[1]^[17]

Portnoy’s war with Mamdani and talk of a mayor run

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy has turned his feud with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani into something bigger, hinting he might run against him and bluntly asking, “Can I win here?” Portnoy has used his media platforms and cable news to paint Mamdani as “closer to a communist” and “one of the worst, scariest candidates,” saying he hates capitalism and wants a “fundamental shift” in the country’s economic system. For many viewers, this sounds less like a policy debate and more like a culture war fight over what kind of city New York will become.^[2]^[4]

Portnoy’s attacks do not stop at labels. He claims Mamdani openly wants “to put as many socialists in power so he can seize the means of production,” language that echoes old fears about government taking over private business. He also accuses Mamdani of siding with terrorists, citing Mamdani’s past criticism of Boston police for allegedly not reading Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights, and goes so far as to say Mamdani would “be quicker to blame the finance people in the building than the people who flew the planes” on 9/11. These charges are extreme and play directly into the sense, common on the right, that the ruling class is hostile to American victims and soft on crime and terrorism.^[2]^[4]^[9]

What Mamdani has actually said and done

Mamdani and his record do not line up neatly with Portnoy’s picture. When a backlash erupted over his comments about his aunt’s fear after 9/11, Mamdani clarified on national television that he did not blame the victims of the attack. He said, “I never said the victims of 9/11 were not the victims… I was talking about the Islamophobia that happened after 9/11 that my aunt experienced,” stressing that his point was about how Muslim Americans were treated in the years that followed. That context undercuts Portnoy’s claim that Mamdani would blame 9/11 victims and highlights how fear and anger can twist a quote into a weapon.^[11]

On policy, Mamdani’s main focus as a Democratic socialist has been on issues like rent affordability and balancing the city budget, not government ownership of factories or small businesses. His campaign and mayoral agenda emphasize renter protections, progressive taxation within constitutional limits, and shifting city spending toward housing and services rather than corporate giveaways. Analysts who track local politics note that, in general, partisan battles in mayor races rarely change basics like overall crime rates or police budgets in a major way, even when the rhetoric feels extreme. This mismatch between radical labels and more modest policy fights feeds the sense, common on both left and right, that national media turns every local dispute into a culture war story while real problems like rent, wages, and safety remain unsolved.^[2]^[17]^[18]

Threats to move Barstool and what they reveal

Portnoy has raised the stakes by threatening to move Barstool Sports’ headquarters, valued around $600 million, out of New York City in response to Mamdani’s win. He says there is “zero value to being in New York” and that other cities are “far more pro-business,” echoing long-standing complaints from business owners about high taxes, heavy rules, and political leaders who seem more focused on ideology than growth. He has even told his “finance guys” to start looking for office space elsewhere, likely in lower-tax states, which alarms workers who depend on the company for their paycheck. At the same time, Portnoy admits he worries about hurting his employees and wonders how much would really change if he left, making his threat feel both serious and somewhat symbolic.^[1]^[3]^[4]^[6]

This is not a new tactic. Researchers have documented that celebrity business owners have used relocation threats in at least a dozen major city elections since 2010, often to get attention or pressure local leaders. These threats succeed in driving media coverage most of the time but only lead to actual moves in a minority of cases. For many ordinary New Yorkers, this pattern adds to a bitter feeling: wealthy figures can dangle jobs and investment over the city’s head while everyday residents, from delivery drivers to nurses, have no such leverage. Both conservatives tired of “anti-business” rules and liberals tired of corporate power see the same thing—elites fighting each other while regular people stay stuck with high rent and shaky services.^[17]

Islamophobia, online anger, and a deeper distrust of elites

The Portnoy–Mamdani clash also sits inside a wider wave of anger and fear on social media. One research group tracked more than 35,000 posts on X during the mayoral campaign that used Islamophobic or exclusionary language against Mamdani, often calling him a terrorist, pushing “Islamization” conspiracies, or questioning his patriotism and citizenship. Many of these narratives matched Portnoy’s framing—tying Mamdani’s left-wing politics to terrorism and suggesting he is an “infiltrator” who hates America. For Muslim Americans and many on the left, this looks like the government and media failing yet again to protect citizens from smear campaigns based on their faith.^[17]

"Dave Portnoy tells Jesse Watters he'd love to run for NYC mayor against Zohran Mamdani: 'I’ve done a lot of good in NYC — Barstool Fund, pizza places. I’ve had a real job. I’ve done real things, unlike these clown politicians who have never had a job and have never been in the… pic.twitter.com/6sGc5C9kom

— DR Hally (@HallyMaax) June 30, 2026

For conservatives, Portnoy’s broadsides tap into another frustration: a belief that globalist and “woke” leaders care more about protecting criminals and scolding ordinary Americans than defending victims or small businesses. For liberals, Mamdani’s story fits their own fear that powerful corporations and wealthy media figures can distort public debate and threaten workers’ jobs whenever they dislike a democratic election. Both sides see systems—city hall, national parties, media platforms—serving the loudest and richest voices first. When a sports media mogul can talk seriously about running for mayor while threatening to yank a major company from the city, many Americans across the spectrum hear the same message: the game is rigged, and the people in charge are playing power politics while the rest of the country fights just to stay afloat.