Pizza Critic to City Hall? Dave Portnoy Eyes NYC Mayor Race

From hot takes on pizza joints to hot takes on city governance—Dave Portnoy, the 49-year-old Barstool Sports founder, is now seriously mulling a run for New York City mayor. And yes, people are already drawing comparisons to Spencer Pratt’s recent mayoral campaign in Los Angeles.

During a June 29 appearance on Fox News with Jesse Watters, Portnoy laid out his case for jumping into politics, leaning on the classic Plato quote about the price good men pay for indifference to public affairs. He’s convinced that’s what’s happening in New York right now—a leadership vacuum he feels compelled to fill. It’s not a position he arrived at lightly, either. Portnoy has long believed the private sector is where real change happens, but he says the current moment demands something different. Not enough people are voting, he argued, and the city needs leaders willing to step up.

What’s his sales pitch? Experience in the real world.“I’ve had a real job, I’ve done real things, unlike these clown politicians who have never had a job and never been in the real world for a day,”Portnoy said—a dig aimed at what he characterizes as a political class disconnected from everyday business realities. He’s specifically eyeing a matchup against current New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D), who won the January 2026 election against former Democrat Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an Independent. Portnoy himself voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 but has positioned himself as someone whose views straddle both parties.

The internet’s reaction has been mixed at best. Social media users have been quick to invoke the Spencer Pratt comparison—the reality star who ran for L.A. mayor earlier this year and lost the primary election on June 2 to Nithya Raman (who will now face incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in November). The parallels are obvious enough: entertainers and businessmen with outsized media profiles, limited political experience, and confidence bordering on swagger. One X user quipped,“Apparently managing New York City isn’t a real job, but writing blog posts about pizza is. Good to know where we’ve set the bar.”

But not everyone was dismissive. Some supporters argued Portnoy’s business acumen and outsider status could be exactly what the city needs. Others, though, saw the whole thing as the latest chapter in celebrity-politician theater—entertaining maybe, but a troubling trend nonetheless. Whether Portnoy actually throws his hat in the ring remains to be seen, but one thing’s clear: New York politics just got a lot more interesting.