Days out from L.A.’s mayoral primary, the reality TV villain turned online crystal merchant Spencer Pratt is one of the frontrunning candidates in the race. Imagine reading that sentence a citywide election cycle ago.
The town’s crises — chief among them rampant homelessness and departing film and TV production — have created an opening for Pratt, who emerged as a populist firebrand after his family’s house burned down in the January 2025 Palisades Fire. A registered Republican, his insult-fueled outrage over what he characterizes as systemic incompetence has morphed into a law-and-order campaign that’s rattled the local liberal Democratic establishment.
Pratt’s key rivals are incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and her progressive challenger, Nithya Raman, a city councilwoman repping an industry-heavy district stretching from Sherman Oaks across the Hollywood Hills to Silver Lake. The top two vote getters advance to a Nov. 3 runoff.
Bass’ standing is weak across the electorate post-fires even as Hollywood’s crew unions and other labor groups have endorsed her. Yet she retains a lead in polls and sees Pratt — a political novice regarded as a joke at City Hall who released a tell-all memoir that reads like an oppo file just before entering the race — as easier to beat. So, too, do her union allies at the deep-pocketed L.A. County Federation of Labor, which paid for a pseudo attack ad against him that Raman called a “cynical” attempt to ice her out and boost Pratt’s chances.
