Alec Baldwin Might Run For Mayor of New York City

Alec Baldwin may be mulling throwing his hat into the ring for the next New York City Mayoral race. Now that scandal-plagued Anthony Weiner seems to be out of the running, Baldwin seems to fancy his chances. “Alec said, ‘Hey, maybe this changes the race. The dynamics have shifted,’ ” a friend of Baldwin told the iPad paper The Daily. “The Democrats need a high-profile candidate, and Alec can fill that bill.”

Adding fuel to the fire, Baldwin’s rep Matthew Hiltzik said that he “wouldn’t rule it out,” when asked by The Hollywood Reporter about his boss’ rumored political plans. Baldwin, a Democrat originally from Massapequa, Long Island, has said that 2012 would be his last year on the hit sitcom 30 Rock, freeing up his schedule for the 2013 mayoral elections.

Baldwin has long had political aspirations. As early as 1997, Baldwin, now 53, said he would consider politics in a few years. “Is this something that I want to do? Yes,” he said in a New York magazine cover story. “The men and women that run the world are in their 50s. It takes time to build that kind of thing.” He reiterated this desire in 2008. “There’s no age limit on running for office, to a degree… [It's] something I might do, one day,” he said on 60 Minutes.

In January, Baldwin said he was “very interested” in running for office, and while he had been approached about political posts outside New York, he would prefer to live in the city. He cited his middle-class upbringing as an alternative to the current crop of leaders: “I don’t want to say this in an anti-elitist way, but… We’ve had 22 years of Yale and Harvard running this country right now, and the problems aren’t getting solved,” Baldwin told CNN’s Eliot Spitzer. “I do believe that people want to believe that someone who deeply cares about the middle class … would like to seek public office.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had New York City’s term-limit law rewritten to win his third term, isn’t expected to run again in 2013. Baldwin is the biggest name so far to announce his bid to succeed him at “the second hardest job” in the nation. Other candidates include City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Councilman Bill de Blasio, and former New York comptroller Bill Thompson, who narrowly lost to Bloomberg in 2009.