For years, New Yorkers have watched celebrities parachute into politics with carefully focus-grouped slogans, soft interviews, and enough consultants to stock a Midtown skyscraper. Michael Rapaport is promising the exact opposite.
The Queens-born actor and professional loudmouth says he’s all in for a 2029 run against New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — and he’s already sharpening the knives.
Appearing on Chris Cuomo’s NewsNation program this week, Rapaport made clear he isn’t planning some polished, kumbaya-style campaign complete with subway selfies and staged bodega visits. He says taking on the democratic socialist mayor will require what he called a “New York City street fight mentality.”
“I never thought that I would even consider running for mayor of New York City, and I will do it with the best intentions,” Rapaport said. “And I won’t do it the way any other political person has ever done it.”
Then came the haymaker.
“The only way to beat this guy is to make it and take it with New York City street fight mentality.”
Forget civility seminars. Rapaport thinks Gotham politics has become a bare-knuckle brawl — and he wants in the ring.
The “True Romance” and “Higher Learning” actor unloaded on Mamdani with the kind of scorched-earth rhetoric that has made him a favorite among fed-up New Yorkers who think the city’s leadership has drifted from reality somewhere between migrant hotel contracts and anti-cop protests.
“There’s no way to out-nice him. There’s no way to out-slick him,” Rapaport said. “I think that he’s the greatest bull crapper in the history of politicians … and that’s saying a lot.”
Not exactly the language of a future ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Still, Rapaport insists he’s serious — or at least serious enough until someone else emerges who can actually beat the progressive firebrand mayor.
“Yes, I’m running for mayor of New York City,” he declared. “And I will only drop out until I feel like there’s somebody who’s more qualified that could actually beat Zohran the moron.”
That nickname alone will probably send Park Slope into collective therapy.
Rapaport admits he’s more bark than bite, but says finesse won’t work against a politician he views as media-savvy and ideologically entrenched. “There’s no way to out-finesse this guy, out-smile this guy,” he said. “It has to be a dogfight. It has to be ugly, and that’s what I will do in my campaign.”
In January, Rapaport first floated the idea on his “I Am Rapaport” podcast, sounding less like a traditional candidate and more like the angry guy at the end of the bar who somehow starts making sense after the third rant. “My name is Michael Rapaport, a.k.a. Mayor Rapaport. Mr. Mayor Rapaport,” he joked before pivoting into a familiar critique of a city many residents increasingly say feels less safe, less affordable, and more chaotic by the month. “2025 was crazy, and I don’t see it getting any calmer or cooler in 2026,” he said. “That’s why I’m running for mayor.”
On Instagram, Rapaport leaned hard into his outer-borough credentials, reminding followers he was “Born. Raised. NYC.” “Nothing’s free. No bulls—. No fake grins,” he wrote. “I’ll own my mistakes, apologize when I screw up, and fight to make this city safe, affordable, and thriving.”
Then came another shot at City Hall: “You got Zoron the Moron now… Mayor Rapaport is coming. How you like them apples?”
The actor’s political turn hasn’t happened in a vacuum. Since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks and the wave of anti-Israel demonstrations that followed across New York, Rapaport has become one of Hollywood’s loudest pro-Israel voices — often torching progressive leaders he says have tolerated antisemitism and disorder in the city.
Just last week, he blasted Gov. Kathy Hochul after anti-Israel protesters gathered outside a synagogue in New York City. “Lunatics dressed in Halloween terra costumes are outside of… you guessed it, a synagogue in NYC,” Rapaport wrote on X, demanding the governor “RESIGN in SHAME.”
Whether New Yorkers are ready to elect a mayor who sounds more like a WFAN caller than a policy wonk is another question entirely. But in a city where politics increasingly feels like performance art, Rapaport may have realized something before everybody else:
The circus already came to town. He’s just auditioning to be ringmaster.
