Los Angeles voters tuned in for a mayoral debate Wednesday night and got something Democrats probably weren’t expecting: Spencer Pratt looking like the only candidate willing to say the obvious out loud.
The former Hills star — who has never pretended his reality TV past didn’t happen — leaned into the thing that first made him famous: knowing how to command a camera. But this time, the stakes weren’t pre-scripted personal drama. Pratt used the stage to hammer Mayor Karen Bass and Councilwoman Nithya Raman over homelessness, crime, public disorder, illegal immigration and the failures surrounding the devastating Palisades Fire.
In one viral exchange, Pratt challenged Raman’s approach to homelessness, offering to go “below the freeway” with her to find the people she wants to “offer treatment” to — before bluntly warning, “She’s going to get stabbed in the neck.” The point? LA’s leaders sell sanitized policy “solutions” while residents live with the dangerous reality.
In one of the debate’s sharpest moments, Pratt confronted Bass over her administration’s wildfire response, accusing the city of leaving firefighters without the resources they needed as parts of LA burned.
He was just as direct when asked whether non-citizens should vote in U.S. elections. Pratt was the only person to give a clear “no,” while Bass and Raman gave waffling, mealy-mouthed answers.
Pratt’s viral campaign ads have turned his personal loss from the Palisades Fire into a broader indictment of LA’s political class. Even mainstream media outlets had to admit he had a breakout moment. Vanity Fair noted that Pratt needed to prove he could do more than “farm outrage online” — and, “for stretches” of the debate, did exactly that.
For Bass and Raman, the debate was supposed to expose Pratt as a celebrity sideshow.
Instead, Pratt turned the cameras back on them.
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