Photo Credit | Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times
Former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who is now running for mayor of Los Angeles, has taken the internet by storm with his creative campaign ads and impassioned attacks on the city’s incompetent liberal leadership. But can he really overcome the Democrat Party machine and defeat incumbent Karen Bass?
According to polling – maybe. The first hurdle he must overcome is the June 2 primary.
Under California’s jungle primary system, all candidates compete in a single nonpartisan primary election. If any candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, he or she automatically wins the election. If no candidate wins an outright majority, the top two vote-getters regardless of party advance to a runoff election in November.
Recent polling in the race shows Bass in first place but far below the 50 percent threshold. Pratt is in a heated battle for second against City Councilwoman Nithya Raman.
The most recent survey from Cygnal Political, fielded from May 15-18, shows Bass with 25 percent support, followed by Pratt at 22 percent and Raman at 18 percent. In a two-way contest, Bass edges Pratt 47 percent to 33 percent, with 20 percent saying they are undecided.
An Emerson College poll conducted May 9-10 put Bass at 35 percent, with Raman and Pratt tied at 23 percent. A Tavern Research poll from earlier in May showed Bass at 22 percent, Pratt at 18 percent, and Raman at 16 percent, with 29 percent undecided.
Those results suggest that Pratt would still have a steep hill to climb even if he can make the November runoff. But his candidacy is far from a mere publicity stunt or long-shot bid. Given the right conditions, he could shock the political world this year.
Pratt, 42, first became famous in the early 2000s as the villain of MTV’s “The Hills,” a reality show following the personal and professional lives of young adults living in LA. His foray into politics began after he and his wife, Heidi Montag, lost the home they shared with their two children in the January 2025 wildfires that ripped through Southern California.
Pratt subsequently sued the city of Los Angeles over the fires and pushed for an investigation into Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom. That advocacy led him to launch his campaign for mayor on January 7 of this year, one year to the day after his house burned down.
While Pratt is a registered Republican, in interviews he has cast himself as an outsider forced into politics by the condition of the city. Asked by CNN’s Elex Michaelson to name his political role model, Pratt answered, “Jesus Christ,” according to Fox News. When asked what distinguished him from his opponents, he said, “Truth.”
Pratt has leaned into his outsider status. “I don’t want to be a politician,” he told CNN. “I want to be a fighter for the people.”
Pratt is offering a blunt indictment of a city where homelessness, crime, fire recovery, affordability, and basic quality of life have become daily frustrations for residents. His appeal depends on convincing voters that those problems are not inevitable features of dense urban life, but rather the result of failed leadership.
Pratt’s campaign message is built around a simple promise to give Los Angeles a makeover.
On his campaign website, Pratt says he wants the city to become “camera-ready” for its residents, not just for tourists or entertainment executives. In one recent ingenious campaign strategy, Pratt’s campaign power washed the city’s filthy streets using stencils that read, “imagine if the streets were this clean – Spencer Pratt for mayor of LA.”
In addition to demanding investigations into city officials over the 2025 wildfires, Pratt has also called for a streamlined chain of command and faster disaster response.
On fiscal issues, Pratt frames the city budget as a contract with taxpayers. His campaign calls for competitive bidding, an end to automatic contract renewals and “sweetheart deals,” and performance audits of major city programs.
Public safety is another central plank of Pratt’s platform. His campaign says the first responsibility of city government is to keep people safe, and he has rejected what he calls “defund-style politics.” He has also detailed plans to put an LAPD officer outside every school in the city.
But homelessness may be the sharpest contrast between Pratt and his opponents. His campaign argues that Los Angeles does not have a homelessness crisis because taxpayers have spent too little, but because the city has spent billions on the wrong approach. In his “treatment-first” plan, Pratt says Los Angeles has a drug crisis more than a housing crisis and calls for ending the distribution of drug paraphernalia.
According to The New York Times, Pratt has not purchased any television airtime, while his opponents have spent close to $2 million on traditional television and radio ads. Instead, his campaign has been lifted by a true grassroots movement and clever use of social media and AI-generated videos. One video posted on X depicted Pratt as a Batman-style figure fighting Bass, Newsom, and former Vice President Kamala Harris.
These AI videos have played a critical role in elevating Pratt into serious contention. Since the Batman-style video appeared, Pratt has raised more than $600,000 in donations of $1,000 or more — 10 times more than Bass over the same period, according to the Times.
Pratt has also defied campaign custom and rejected association with the city’s political establishment. While Bass, Raman, and two other candidates attended a recent San Fernando Valley candidate forum, Pratt skipped the event and instead held a block party in South Los Angeles.
The key question will be whether Pratt’s online energy can translate to votes. The Times notes that many of Pratt’s donors and supporters do not live in Los Angeles and cannot vote in the race.
Los Angeles has not had a Republican mayor since Richard Riordan, who held office from 1993 to 2001. Republicans make up less than 15 percent of the city’s registered voters, according to The Hill, and the Times reported that registered Democrats account for roughly 55 percent of the electorate.
But Pratt is hardly a conventional Republican. As he explained to CNN, his party registration primarily stems from his frustration at not being able to obtain a concealed carry permit for his own personal security after receiving death threats.
For Pratt to win, he will have to convince voters that this election is not about Republican vs. Democrat, but rather that it is a referendum on the people in charge. No one has been held accountable for the deaths of more than 400 Angelenos during the 2025 wildfires. Bass still denies any responsibility, even though she was out of the country when the blazes began despite knowing that dangerous fire conditions existed.
Los Angeles may be a deep blue city, but Pratt is betting that frustration with the obvious decline of a once proud and vibrant metropolis will overcome party loyalty. The rest of America can clearly see that LA Democrats have delivered nothing but incompetent governance, declining standards of living, and rampant corruption and waste of taxpayer dollars. Now the question is, can enough LA voters come to the same conclusion?
Sarah Katherine Sisk is a proud Hillsdale College alumna and a master’s student in economics at George Mason University. You can follow her on X @SKSisk76.
