Reality TV star Spencer Pratt advances to a November runoff against Mayor Karen Bass after finishing second in the LA mayoral primary. Pratt, who held a Sherman Oaks campaign event in May, earned 29.45% of the vote.
Reality TV star Spencer Pratt surged into second place in the Los Angeles mayoral primary on Tuesday, setting up a November runoff against incumbent Mayor . The result sends a high-profile outsider campaign into the general election, with Pratt's roots in the San Fernando Valley neighborhood of giving the race a distinctly local flavor.
According to the Los Angeles County registrar's office, early returns showed Bass holding 36.54% of the vote, followed by Pratt at 29.45%, and City Councilmember Nithya Raman at 21.02%.
Because no candidate crossed the 50% threshold, the top two finishers advance to a November 3 runoff. Pratt maintained an 8 percentage point lead over Raman, putting him roughly 30,000 votes ahead of the councilmember as of early Wednesday morning.
"Incumbent Karen Bass and Republican Spencer Pratt led the race early Wednesday," according to The Washington Post's coverage of the primary returns.
TMZ reported that the race for LA's mayor will be decided in a runoff between just Pratt and Bass, with Pratt firmly entrenched in second place.
Pratt's connection to the Valley is not new. On Saturday, May 16, the mayoral candidate held a community meet-and-greet event at a home on Longridge Avenue in a residential neighborhood of Sherman Oaks. The event drew scores of supporters, according to Los Angeles Times reporting.
"His messages were welcomed by the scores of people who showed up Saturday for a campaign meet and greet in Sherman Oaks," the Los Angeles Times reported.
Sherman Oaks resident Janet Sams told the Anchorage Daily News that she had been in the area for 20 years and said "this place has just deteriorated," standing near a stack of Pratt lawn signs at the event.
Pratt, a registered Republican best known as a cast member on the 2000s reality show The Hills, has built his campaign around his status as a victim of the Palisades Fire in January 2025. He has been living in an Airstream trailer on his burned-out lot in Pacific Palisades since the blaze destroyed his home.
According to The New York Times, Pratt has "used his status as a victim of the Palisades fire to mount an outsider campaign portraying Los Angeles officials as incapable of solving the city's problems."
GV Wire reported that Pratt "has used his role as a fire victim to fuel a campaign that portrays Bass, and California Democrats more generally, as clueless elites who have let California go to seed."
Bass was abroad in Ghana when the Palisades Fire broke out, a trip she later called a "mistake." Her handling of both the wildfire response and LA's chronic homelessness crisis left many voters angry, giving challengers like Pratt opening.
Despite Pratt's strong showing in the primary, some early polling suggests a different dynamic in a head-to-head matchup. A Berkeley IGS poll found that Raman and Bass would defeat Pratt by double digits in a runoff, according to the Los Angeles Times.
But Pratt's campaign argues that voter discontent is the real story. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., told Fox News Digital that Pratt has won a following in the mayoral contest due to widespread voter dissatisfaction with Bass' leadership.
"He's catching fire among ardent historic Democrat voters because Karen Bass has been so ineffective," Issa said.
The November 3 runoff will determine who leads Los Angeles for the next term. For Sherman Oaks voters, the race carries particular weight. Pratt has made the Valley a central part of his campaign stops, and the neighborhood has become a proving ground for his populist message.
With Pratt's social media following and Bass's incumbency advantage, the general election promises to be one of the most unusual mayoral races in recent Los Angeles history.
This article was generated with AI assistance.