Los Angeles is a broken city, facing huge problems made worse by corrupt politicians. It is overrun by homelessness, crime, blight, and the horrifying aftermath of the 2025 Palisades fire.
In several weeks, Los Angeles voters will elect a new Mayor. One candidate, former reality television star Spencer Pratt, is making a huge splash. He was previously known for his starring role on the MTV show The Hills from 2006 to 2010.
He lost his house, along with his parents, in the Palisades fire. Unlike two of his opponents in the race, incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman, who live in mansions, Pratt and his wife are still living in a mobile home because of the fire. His disgust at the slow recovery of his hometown is fueling his grassroots campaign.
Pratt is a second-generation Los Angeles resident who has remade himself as a “community advocate” and energized mayoral candidate. The nonpartisan primary election will be held on June 2, 2026. While a total of sixteen candidates are in the race, the top three, Pratt, Raman, and Bass, were invited to participate in the first televised debate, hosted by NBC-4 and Telemundo-52, last week.
Pratt did very well and blasted Bass as “an incredible liar” in her comments about the wildfires. As every resident of Los Angeles will remember, Bass was on a “diplomatic mission” in Ghana, 7,000 miles away, when the wildfires started. Bass eventually admitted that “it was a mistake to travel” at the time that Los Angeles “needed me the most.”
In the debate, Pratt blamed Bass for “burning my house, and my parents’ house, and my town, all my neighbors down…As Mayor, I will never drain the reservoirs that we need for wildfire protection.”
Like Bass, the other leading candidate in the race, Raman, is a Democrat. However, she is even more progressive than Bass and has previously received endorsements from the Democratic Socialists of America.
In the debate, Pratt mocked Raman’s plan to offer housing for the homeless. He said, “I will go below the Harbor Freeway tomorrow with her, and we can find some of these people she’s going to offer treatment for. She’s going to get stabbed in the neck. These people do not want a bed. They want fentanyl or super meth.”
Along with his celebrity status and effective communication style, Pratt is being propelled by a series of provocative AI-driven campaign videos that have garnered massive views. He does not identify with a political party, although he is a registered Republican. Pratt says he won “two awards” as a “community advocate,” which is two more than President Barack Obama won as a “community activist” prior to the start of his political career.
Pratt noted that Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate and to the Presidency with his background as a “community activist,” so he feels he has “the same experience” in his work as a “community advocate” in Los Angeles.
Pratt believes that his debate performance was well received because he was “telling the truth.” According to Pratt, “My only goal is to just be true and authentic.” He said, “People are tired (of) politicians lying about what we see every day in LA and what we feel.”
As a non-political outsider, Pratt is more genuine than his stale political opponents, who are tightly managed and carefully scripted. In contrast, Pratt is proud to remind voters that “I do not represent a party. I don’t have a campaign manager,” or political consultants. Pratt said that no one in the political establishment is “backing me.”
While he rejects the label of an “angry LA white guy,” Pratt is connecting with voters the same way that another reality television star, Donald Trump, created a political movement in 2015 by launching an unconventional bid for the presidency.
Trump bested a bevy of political veterans and the massive GOP establishment in winning the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and, a few months later, the presidency. It was a victory that shocked the world, but Trump knew voters were disgusted with typical politicians and were looking for a bold, fresh alternative vision for their country.
Similarly, voters in Los Angeles are disgusted by the situation in their city. In the January 2025 fires, 16,000 “homes, businesses, and other structures” were destroyed, and 31 people were killed. Sixteen months later, only 34 homes have been rebuilt, a shockingly low figure, far worse than the recovery from other California fires in recent years.
Along with a slow recovery from the fires, Los Angeles is known as “the epicenter of America’s homeless crisis.” On any given night, over 75,000 people in Los Angeles County are homeless, which is more than the population of 15 counties in California.
The usual political solutions offered by Bass and Raman are not working. It is time for a unique perspective from an outsider like Spencer Pratt. What do the voters of Los Angeles have to lose? Their city is already a dysfunctional mess and needs immediate assistance.
Although voters in Los Angeles are typically liberal and Pratt is a Republican, he has an outside chance to make history. A recent UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs poll showed him running second, with 11% support, compared to 25% for Bass, the leading candidate. However, a huge segment of the electorate, 40%, remains undecided.
Hopefully, voters will realize they cannot re-elect a mayor who abandoned her city in a time of crisis and who has utterly failed. After 89% of online respondents said Pratt won the mayoral debate, he is surely the candidate with momentum.
As Pratt notes, his opponents “drive around in motorcades and live just this little communist champagne, social life. They don’t live the consequences of their actions.” Pratt lives with “the consequences of (their) failures.”
Unlike his opponents, Spencer Pratt, a former reality television star, is living in the real world, and that will resonate with Los Angeles voters.
Jeff Crouere is a native New Orleanian and his award-winning program, “Ringside Politics,” airs Saturdays from 1-2 p.m. CT nationally on Real America’s Voice TV Network & AmericasVoice.News and weekdays from 7-9 a.m. & 6-7 p.m. CT on WGSO 990-AM & Wgso.com. He is the President and General Manager of WGSO Radio, a political columnist, the author of America’s Last Chance, and provides regular commentaries on the Jeff Crouere YouTube channel and at Crouere.net. For more information, email him at jcrouere@gmail.com.
