Dave Portnoy has again teased a sensational move into politics and said he wants to take down New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The Barstool Sports chief first revealed his potential political ambitions during an episode of Jesse Watters Primetime on Monday night.
Then, footage from a recent Q+A with former Barstool Sports CEO Erika Ayers Badan appeared on social media Thursday night and it showed Portnoy once again threatening to challenge Mamdani.
When Badan asked what office he would run for, Portnoy said: ‘I want to go right for Mamdani but I don’t think I could win.
‘I honestly would. Get him the f*** out. You know, I don’t like New York but I’ve spent a lot of time in New York. I don’t know how I’d do.
‘Unlike Mamdani, who’s never had a job, I’ve had a real job and I’ve actually done a lot of good when I wasn’t doing it to run for office. I was doing it because it’s the right thing to do, whether it’s helping pizzerias, the Barstool Fund, whatever.’
Dave Portnoy has again teased a move into politics and said he wants to beat Zohran Mamdani
Portnoy made the claim in a recent Q+A with former Barstool Sports CEO Erika Ayers Badan
Portnoy, 49, continued: ‘I have a lot of support in this area. I don’t know if I could win this city with the Democrat but, this shouldn’t be politics, but he has said what he wanted to do before he got elected and I trust people and what they say before they’re running.
‘He said some pretty crazy things about what he wants to do. To me, I think Barstool is the American dream. I really do. It’s like you work your a** off, you build a company, you employ 400-450 people that enjoy it, livelihoods. I’ve become wealthy beyond my rich. It kind of is the American dream.
‘If you followed me, like, entrepreneurship and small business is something I care a lot about. I don’t like when I hear people should be ashamed for being successful. That bothers me greatly and a lot of things he says really do bother me.
‘But, I also like laying on the beach in Nantucket. And, if I ran, can you imagine what they would do with the Business Insider stuff.’
Portnoy’s comments come just months after he said he was thankful that he no longer lives in New York after Mamdani was elected.
In November, after Mamdani was announced as the newest mayor of New York City, Portnoy quoted a video of CNN’s Scott Jennings branding him a ‘great actor’ on X and concluded: ‘Scott Jennings sums up Mamdani perfectly. But if this is what the people of NYC want then so be it. Thank god I don’t live there anymore.’
Portnoy has previously expressed his disdain for Mamdani and his left-wing ideology, which has left him weighing up whether to move Barstool’s offices out of New York City.
‘If it was just me, I would move the company out of New York City because I hate this guy so much,’ he said on his company’s ‘The Unnamed Show’ podcast last week.
‘But I won’t because there’s a lot of people in New York, and I don’t want to change their lifestyle for it.’
Portnoy said he was thankful that he no longer lives in New York after Mamdani was elected
During his interview with Watters, Portnoy admitted he has long said he wouldn’t get involved in politics, but his tune has changed because of the ‘crazy’ and ‘scary’ reality that he believes the Democratic Socialist mayor has brought to the Big Apple.
‘I think what the Democrats have done is they’ve let the fox into the hen house, and now he’s just running rampant and carrying them all out,’ Portnoy said of Mamdani.
‘So it’s a scary time. We need leaders to step up. Depending on what day you catch me in Nantucket, when I roll out of bed, I have a nice ocean view, and it’s like why do I wanna ruin my life and get involved in this mess because I know what comes with it.
‘But sometimes I do feel like it’s my duty, I can’t turn away. Like I could make a change, maybe I do run in politics,’ he added.
Watters then asked him: ‘You might run against Mamdani?’
‘I would love to run against – if I was gonna run, it would be here. Can I win here? I have no idea, I don’t know the demographics, whether I’d get enough votes. There’s a lot of people who like me in New York City, I know that,’ Portnoy responded.
