Spencer Pratt almost pulled it off.
On primary night in June 2026, the early vote counting showed the former villain of The Hills sitting comfortably in second place. He held a commanding eight-point lead over progressive City Councilwoman Nithya Raman. For a moment, it looked like Los Angeles was about to enter a surreal political reality where a man who sells healing crystals on TikTok could become the chief executive of America’s second-largest city.
Then the late mail-in ballots dropped. Day by day, Pratt’s lead evaporated. Seven days after the June 2 primary, the Associated Press officially called the race. Raman jumped ahead to secure the second runoff spot with 28.5% of the vote, leaving Pratt stranded at 25.8%. Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass led the pack at 34.3%.
Pratt didn't lose because of a conspiracy, even though his camp immediately started dropping hints that something was rigged. He lost because of basic math, a severe lack of ground game, and a failure to understand that anger doesn’t automatically equal votes in a deeply partisan city.
The Tragedy That Sparked a Populist Campaign
It’s easy to dismiss Pratt’s mayoral bid as a pure publicity stunt. He’s spent the last two decades treating his life as a content mill. But this campaign didn’t start in a television studio. It started with a disaster.
In January 2025, the Palisades Fire tore through Southern California. It was the most destructive wildfire in the history of Los Angeles. Among the thousands of structures reduced to ash was Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag’s family home in Pacific Palisades.
The aftermath was messy. The couple faced heavy public backlash for accepting financial donations from fans online despite their perceived wealth. Pratt fought back, claiming they weren’t nearly as rich as people assumed and were drowning in ongoing mortgage payments and soaring construction costs.
He didn't just complain online. He sued the city of Los Angeles and the Department of Water and Power, blaming municipal incompetence and utility failures for the destruction of his neighborhood. On January 7, 2026—the exact one-year anniversary of the fire—Pratt officially announced his candidacy for mayor.
He wasn't running as a goofy reality star. He ran as an angry, aggrieved homeowner. He positioned himself as a common-sense populist outsider who wanted to punish City Hall for failing to protect its citizens.
The Unlikely Coalition of Spencer Pratt Backers
If you think Pratt only pulled votes from ironic Gen Z TikTok users and aging millennial reality TV fans, you’re dead wrong. He actually managed to build a surprisingly serious conservative coalition.
Because the Los Angeles mayoral race is technically nonpartisan, candidates don't get a party label next to their name on the ballot. Pratt is a registered Republican, and he tried to play that down to appeal to moderate Democrats who are fed up with the state of the city. But the big money and political backing behind him were decidedly conservative.
Record producer David Foster hosted a high-profile fundraising event for him. Major checks rolled in from high-profile figures like Lakers executive Jeanie Buss, actress Katharine McPhee, Rick Salomon, and boxing legend Manny Pacquiao. He even secured the backing of Donald Trump.
On the campaign trail, Pratt didn't talk about reality TV. He focused heavily on public safety, homelessness, and fixing the city's crumbling emergency management system. His platform included:
- Increasing funding for the Los Angeles Police Department to address rising crime.
- Working directly with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
- Redirecting current homelessness funding into mandatory mental health and drug addiction treatment programs.
- Cracking down on violent street takeovers and illegal racing.
For a lot of voters, this message resonated. The city is dealing with a massive structural deficit, high taxes, brutal traffic, and a soaring cost of living. People are tired. Even some registered Democrats admitted that Pratt won them over during the debates because he sounded sharp, prepared, and genuinely angry about the city’s decline.
The Illusion of the Early Lead
So, what went wrong? Why did an eight-percentage-point lead turn into a third-place defeat?
It all comes down to how California processes its elections. The state allows any mail-in ballot postmarked by Election Day to be counted, meaning the final tally takes days, sometimes weeks, to materialize.
On election night, the initial data release included early mail-in ballots that had been processed ahead of time, along with physical votes cast at polling stations on June 2. Conservatives and older voters tend to return their ballots much earlier or vote in person. That’s why Pratt looked like a winner when the first numbers hit the screens.
But progressive organizations and younger Democrats in Los Angeles have a highly sophisticated operation that focuses on dropping off ballots at the absolute last minute. Over the weekend following the election, a massive wave of late-arriving mail ballots favored Raman by a landslide. Raman picked up an additional 43,000 votes over Pratt in a matter of days.
Pratt didn’t handle the shift well. He began insinuating on social media that the late votes were fraudulent, suggesting without evidence that the city was somehow manufacturing ballots from the local homeless population. His sister, Stephanie Pratt, didn't help matters earlier in the cycle when she publicly urged people not to vote for her brother before later reversing her stance.
The Math Behind the Loss
At the end of the day, Los Angeles is a terrible place to run a conservative populist campaign. Only about 15% of registered voters in the city are Republicans.
Pratt managed to pull 25.8% of the vote, which means he actually outperformed his party's registration numbers by tapping into independent and moderate anger. He ended up with roughly the same level of support that Trump received in the city during the 2024 presidential election. In a city that overwhelmingly detests the current conservative national movement, that's a hard ceiling you simply cannot break.
You can't win a major city wide election by just being angry. You have to build a diverse, cross-cultural coalition across different geographic and ethnic lines. Pratt’s message played well in the affluent, fire-threatened hills of the Westside and among conservative pockets in the San Fernando Valley. It didn't play at all in the rest of the city.
What Happens to Los Angeles Now
With Pratt out of the picture, Los Angeles avoids a chaotic, media-circus general election and instead gets a stark ideological battle.
Karen Bass looks incredibly vulnerable right now. Pulling under 35% of the vote as an incumbent is a terrible sign. It shows that the city is deeply dissatisfied with her leadership. She now has to defend her record against Nithya Raman, a progressive darling backed by the Democratic Socialists of America.
The Bass campaign has already pivoted to attacking Raman from the right, releasing statements calling her opponent "MIA on saving Hollywood jobs" and criticizing her past stances on police funding and homeless encampments near schools.
As for Spencer Pratt, he’s previously claimed that he would leave Los Angeles permanently if he lost the election. Whether he actually packs up his crystal business and leaves the Pacific Palisades remains to be seen. But his bizarre, chaotic run proved one thing. Voters are desperate enough for change that they will seriously consider a reality TV villain—right up until the final ballots are counted.
