A Reality Check on Spencer Pratt’s L.A. Mayoral Run

In its initial phases, the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral contest was as low-key (bordering on boring) as the parallel California gubernatorial race. Mayor Karen Bass has had persistently low job-approval numbers, dating back to her shaky handling of the Palisades Fire early last year. But several potential big-dog rivals (including her wealthy 2022 opponent, mall developer Rick Caruso) gave the race a pass. It seemed L.A. would give the incumbent a second term, as it’s done many times in the past.

But then two significant challenges to Bass emerged. In January, exactly one year after his Pacific Palisades home burned down, reality TV star Spencer Pratt announced a mayoral run during a “They Let Us Burn” rally, in which protesters expressed frustration at the slow pace of rebuilding in the afflicted area. A month later, L.A. councilmember Nithya Raman, a progressive ally of the mayor’s, surprised observers by jumping into the race.

Now, with voting due to conclude on June 2 (all registered voters have been sent mail ballots, but some may elect to turn them in at drop boxes or Election Day polling centers), polls have increasingly confirmed that this is a three-way race, with two tickets to the November election up for grabs. The latest, from UC Berkeley–L.A. Times, shows Bass with 26 percent, Raman with 25 percent, and Pratt with 22 percent among likely voters. That’s consistent with earlier polls showing the incumbent treading water and her two opponents — one running to her left, one to her right — gradually gaining strength.

It’s Pratt whose campaign appears to have gone viral nationally as well as locally. A notorious heel on the 2000s reality show The Hills with a big social-media following, Pratt embodied Palisades Fire victimhood (he is still more or less living in an Airstream trailer on his burned-out lot). But his campaign has quickly morphed into a populist-outsider attack on the city’s problems and their mismanagement by the powers that be. He’s raised a surprising amount of money, and his over-the-top ads are a constant topic of discussion. His most famous ad deployed AI to depict himself as Batman and Bass as the Joker, surrounded by various famous Democrats:

The ad shows Pratt’s appeal as a bomb thrower in a city suffering from chronic problems and poor morale, but also his limitations. It’s a very MAGA-coded message that focuses as much on mocking Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris (both of whom racked up huge vote margins in Los Angeles in recent elections) as in demonizing Karen Bass. Since Pratt is a Republican and has received an enthusiastic shout-out from President Trump (a profoundly unpopular person in Los Angeles), it’s likely his rise in the polls represents a consolidation of the small but very real conservative minority in the city (Trump himself won 26 percent of the vote there in 2024). So there’s likely a pretty firm ceiling on Pratt’s vote that’s well south of a majority.

Meanwhile, Nithya Raman is seeking to undermine progressive support for the incumbent. Her ethnicity (she was born in India and was the first South Asian American member of the Los Angeles City Council) and past backing from the Democratic Socialists of America has led to some comparisons with Zohran Mamdani. She’s tried to moderate her message during the current contest and could benefit from concerns among Democrats generally about how well Bass has handled her reelection campaign. But she has to worry about a rival to her own left in tenant-rights advocate Rae Chen Huang, who had 9 percent in the UC Berkeley–LAT poll.

The same poll included general-election trial heats that showed Bass leading Pratt by 47 percent to his 29 percent, but Raman leading Bass by 32 percent to 28 percent (it’s a less likely scenario, but Raman leads Pratt by 45 percent to 28 percent). Both Bass and Pratt have personal unfavorability ratings of 57 percent in this poll, showing that Pratt’s abrasive ads and attention-grabbing campaign have probably offended as many voters as they have attracted.

The irony, then, is that Spencer Pratt’s candidacy may be the best thing that could have happened to Karen Bass. If he edges out Raman for a general-election spot, and even if he thrills conservatives everywhere by running first, he’s almost certainly toast against a Democrat in a general election (much like Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton). A Bass-versus-Raman general-election contest would, for obvious reasons, be quite different in tone and the outcome far less clear. But there’s no question backers of the incumbent may privately cheer if it’s the former reality star posing in front of his trailer on primary night boasting of a ticket to November.