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Is it time to take Spencer Pratt seriously? Until recently, I only vaguely remembered the 42-year-old Pratt as the villain from a reality TV show I never watched (MTV’s The Hills) but couldn’t escape because of the ubiquity of the Viacom family of trash television.
But his campaign for mayor of Los Angeles this year has surprised everyone who doubted the viability of a political career of a guy who was once simply known as “Heidi’s boyfriend.” Thanks to his series of attention-getting—gee, where’d he learn that?—AI-generated campaign ads, some high-profile funders, and the low expectations of the calcified political class, Pratt has found himself in a position to proceed to a runoff against the incumbent mayor, Karen Bass. California’s bonkers mail-in voting rules mean that days after Tuesday’s primary, there are still over 35 percent of expected ballots left uncounted, but Pratt is in a competitive second place behind Bass and ahead of Nithya Raman, a city councilwoman and darling of the progressive left.
The race is officially nonpartisan, but the political affiliations of the candidates is hardly a mystery. Bass was an elected Democrat in the state assembly and then the U.S. House of Representatives for nearly two decades before she was elected mayor four years ago. Pratt is an independent-turned-Republican who has run against Bass from the right, starting from the premise that the mayor’s mishandling of the 2025 Palisades wildfire, which destroyed his own home, is illustrative of her mismanagement of the city. Crime and homelessness, he argues, are the result of the liberal excess Bass represents. And it seems that so far, tens of thousands of Los Angeles voters agree with him.
