Checking In on Spencer Pratt’s Mayoral Candidacy

The primary for the Los Angeles mayoral race is just three weeks away, so it’s time to dig into a major celebrity question: How is Spencer Pratt’s candidacy doing?

Pratt, if you are unfamiliar with the seminal reality show The Hills, is one of the originators of the reality-show-villain trope, after he started dating (and eventually married) one of the show’s co-stars, Heidi Montag (erstwhile friend of the show’s actual star, Lauren “LC” Conrad). And based on his recent public appearances,  Pratt’s trolling personality has not changed a smidge since 2007.

That doesn’t seem to bother some of his fellow celebrities, including Katharine McPhee and her husband, David Foster, who performed at a fundraising event for Pratt earlier this week. (McPhee has donated to various Republican causes over the past 15 years so this is not exactly a surprise.) Other medium-famous people supporting him include Kristin Cavallari (showing the most precious of things, MTV reality show alumni solidarity) and Joe Rogan. 

Pratt announced his candidacy (as an independent, even though he’s a registered Republican) in 2025, largely in opposition to incumbent LA Mayor Karen Bass, after his house burned down in the Palisades fire in January 2025. Pratt seems to blame the loss of his home on Bass, and his other main opponent, lefty LA Councilwoman Nithya Raman, saying in a recent ad, “they let my house burn down.” Now, from a political science perspective, this is a classic populist in-versus-out-group rhetorical tactic (“they” = center-left women of color politicians; “me” = Pratt, a medium-successful white guy with no political experience standing in for every other person matching that description), but I also wonder if Pratt actually does think that Bass and her team were like, big LC fans from back in the day and wanted him and Heidi to suffer. 

In that ad, Pratt is standing in front of an airstream trailer on his destroyed land, where he and his family plan to rebuild their house one day (though TBD when; they did not have homeowners insurance). “This is where I live,” he says. But the gumshoes over at TMZ pointed out that this is not, in fact, true: “Spencer has been staying at the Hotel Bel-Air for more than a month. We’re also told his wife, Heidi, and their kids are staying in Carpinteria, just north of L.A. So the trailer is sitting lonely.” (The Hotel Bel-Air runs about $1,500 per night, which does not help Pratt’s attempt to draw a distinction between his bank account and those of his multi-million-dollar-homeowning opponents.) 

In response, Pratt said, “I have never told anyone I lived there.” However, you can watch him doing so yourself. 

If you know anything about him, I feel like you can deduce what’s in the rest of his ads: complaints about “commies,” homelessness, crime, etc.—standard reactionary-but-not-quite-official-Republican fare these days. But Pratt’s seeing some success, even beyond the Katharine McPhees and Joe Rogans of Los Angeles (though his sister, Stephanie Pratt, has said a vote for him is a “vote for stupidity”): He appeared on the debate stage earlier this month, and a poll conducted over the weekend put him in second place behind Bass, with 22% of likely voters saying they support him. (Bass got 30%, Raman got 19%, and 16% of voters say they’re undecided.) If no candidate receives 50% of the vote on June 2, it’ll head to a runoff. Godspeed, Angelenos. 

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