When Republican Spencer Pratt burst into Los Angeles politics, venting a torrent of online fury against Mayor Karen Bass\u2019 handling of the Palisades fire, he pitched his mayoral campaign as a full-bore challenge to L.A.\u2019s political status quo.<\/p>\n
The former reality TV star, who lost his home in the blaze, started as a long shot but emerged as a national story, with the ability to harvest social media attention, rally a base and dominate the news cycle.<\/p>\n
But in a city overwhelmingly Democratic, where Republicans make up just 15% of registered voters, even some of his supporters wondered how far he could rise. In the end, voters selected Bass, a Democratic centrist, and democratic socialist City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who ran to Bass\u2019 left, to face off in the runoff.<\/p>\n
Still, for many of the 200,000 Angelenos who voted for Pratt, his brash, social media-fueled<\/a> campaign was not just a long exercise in trolling. Pratt gave voice to their discontent with the system of one-party rule and said things they too often felt uncomfortable saying.<\/p>\n And now, they face a difficult choice of who to support in November.<\/p>\n \u201cI know a lot of people who are disappointed,\u201d said Meghan Daum, an L.A. writer and podcaster and former Los Angeles Times columnist who endorsed Pratt<\/a>. \u201cThey are saying, \u2018OK, now what? What can we do?\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n While Pratt did not make the runoff, political experts said his candidacy tapped into Angelenos\u2019 dissatisfaction with the Democratic establishment and resonated with a sizable number of Angelenos who are rarely represented in L.A. politics.<\/p>\n \u201cHe identified a previously invisible level of anger and frustration,\u201d said Dan Schnur, a longtime politics professor at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine University, of Pratt. \u201cThe question going forward is whether he, or someone else, can shape that raw emotion into a movement.\u201d<\/p>\n Pratt has yet to put out a statement conceding the race or contesting the results. As a stream of Republicans, including President Trump, made unfounded allegations of election fraud in California, the campaign\u2019s most online candidate was conspicuously absent on X and Instagram.<\/p>\n Some Democrats in L.A. urged Pratt to make good on his promise to leave the city<\/a> if Bass or Raman were elected. Late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel, a prominent Democrat, told Pratt he had rented him a U-Haul.<\/p>\n Despite the snark from Democrats, political observers say Pratt changed the terms of L.A.\u2019s mayoral debate.<\/p>\n \u201cHe forced the more conventional candidates to talk about the issues in a way that would not have been the case if he weren\u2019t in the race,\u201d Schnur said.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the first time in years, there is a critical mass of citizens who are done pretending that what they see before their eyes isn\u2019t really there,\u201d Daum wrote on her Substack<\/a>. \u201cThe people in charge will have to answer to those citizens.\u201d <\/p>\n In the final weeks of the campaign, Pratt became ubiquitous in the national media. There were profiles in high-end publications, podcast interviews and regular reports from Fox News. But the results show he fell short of persuading enough Angelenos to make the runoff.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t appear that he\u2019s impacted the political underpinnings of a deep blue city like Los Angeles,\u201d Schnur said. \u201cHis impact was less ideological than attitudinal. He wasn\u2019t convincing the voters to become more conservative, he was convincing them that it was OK for them to vent their anger in an unconventional way.\u201d<\/p>\n Dissatisfaction is building in L.A. as the city\u2019s cost of living mounts and a new generation of young Angelenos are unable to buy homes. Many are concerned about the lack of visible progress on street homelessness. Some are angry at what they see as city leaders\u2019 poor preparation and response to the Palisades fire. <\/p>\n Ultimately, the momentum for change in Los Angeles was divided. As Pratt challenged Bass from the right, Raman tacked to the left of Bass on homelessness and policing and made affordability a key plank of her campaign.<\/p>\n Whatever their concerns about the status quo in L.A., many Angelenos were unwilling to vote for a Republican.<\/p>\n During the course of the campaign, Daum said she had numerous conversations with Angelenos who said: \u201cI can\u2019t associate with anybody who voted for Trump. I can\u2019t have them in my house. I can\u2019t have a conversation with them. I want nothing to do with them.\u201d<\/p>\n A 42-year-old millennial who became famous on \u201cThe Hills\u201d and owns a business selling \u201chealing\u201d crystals, Pratt had no political experience when he entered the mayoral race. He didn\u2019t even appear to have a campaign manager.<\/p>\n \u201cThe system in Los Angeles isn\u2019t struggling, it\u2019s fundamentally broken,\u201d Pratt said as he launched his campaign on Jan. 7, the anniversary of the fire. \u201cIt is a machine designed to protect the people at the top and the friends they exchange favors with while the rest of us drown in toxic smoke and ash.\u201d<\/p>\n Bombastic and full of braggadocio, Pratt critiqued what he saw as Bass\u2019 failure to prepare for and respond<\/a> to the wildfires. He berated city leaders for not doing enough to get unhoused people off the streets. He railed against the city\u2019s challenges with public safety,<\/a> potholes<\/a>, and the abuse of dogs on Skid Row<\/a>. He even seized on a comment<\/a> Bass made on the campaign trail about using taxpayer money to fund dental care for meth users<\/a>.<\/p>\n As Pratt talked about homelessness, his message resonated with Marissa Comstock, 36, a stay-at-home mom and former software engineer in Eagle Rock.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s totally obvious to me,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need to get these people off the street.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, Comstock said she and her husband had a negative encounter at Griffith Park as they pushed their daughters around in strollers. Just a few minutes into their hike, she said, they were accosted by an unhoused person who screamed at them and threatened to cut off their daughters\u2019 legs.<\/p>\n Since that incident, Comstock said, she takes her daughters only to places like the Huntington or Descanso Gardens that require membership to be admitted.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t feel comfortable even being on regular streets,\u201d she said. \u201cIf there\u2019s some crazy homeless person, what am I supposed to do?\u201d<\/p>\n Pratt did extraordinarily well in capturing attention and developing a message, said Paul Mitchell, vice president of the Sacramento-based bipartisan firm Political Data Inc. Many Angelenos, he noted, had a better sense of Pratt\u2019s viewpoint than they did of much more deeply funded California gubernatorial candidates, like Matt Mahan or Xavier Becerra.<\/p>\n During his campaign, Pratt did not express support for Trump or the Make America Great Again movement. He insisted he was a nonpartisan candidate running on local issues.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to show everybody that I\u2019m their mayor,\u201d Pratt said on election night. <\/p>\n But even if Pratt was not explicitly MAGA, his reality TV theatrics mixed with antiestablishment populism were so MAGA-coded that he struggled to persuade disaffected liberal Angelenos. He referred to the homeless as \u201cfentanyl zombies<\/a>.\u201d He railed against California\u2019s \u201csocialism.\u201d He called Bass \u201cBasura,\u201d Spanish for trash.<\/p>\n When Trump spoke of Pratt, telling reporters \u201cI heard he\u2019s a big MAGA person,\u201d Raman was quick to share<\/a> Trump\u2019s remarks on social media, warning Angelenos that Pratt was wildly out of step with their views.<\/p>\n