While driving around Los Angeles last month, I was shocked to find myself singing a song from a viral campaign ad from the LA mayoral race. In Southern California, most of us rarely, if ever, think of an LA mayor, let alone a primary candidate. But this year’s election is different. Spencer Pratt, 42, rose to fame in recent episodes of the MTV reality show. Mountains. In January 2025, his home burned down in the Palisades Fire. And recently, his bid to unseat Mayor Karen Bass has been the talk of the South.
Pratt started a long race: He’s a registered Republican in a heavily Democratic city, and he has no experience in government. Yet last week he was one of only three candidates to qualify for a televised debate––a debate that could not have been better for him. While Bass and LA City Council Member Nithya Raman spent much of their time focusing on each other’s failure to solve the city’s problems, Pratt had the advantage of being the only option on stage for voters who want change. And he stuck to his strategy of focusing on local issues, including fire preparedness, crime, homeless encampments, and underutilized funds, without even mentioning a subject unrelated to Los Angeles.
As the June 2 primary approaches, Pratt is leaning heavily on his image as an outsider—and online, many people and populist groups have eagerly followed him. To have any chance of winning, Pratt must tap into the crowd energy that drives him. But just like a drag racer with nitro, too much power will cause it to seize up and burn out.
A pro-Pratt ad that’s stuck in my head, “Spencer, Take Out the Trash!,” is a salsa-inspired earworm by a group called Latinos por Pratt (which Los Angeles Times report appears to be one person, a Cuban-American lawyer). The title of the song translates as “Spencer, Take Out the Trash!” “Mayor Karen traveled off the map while the hills burned,” the first line begins, reminding voters that Bass was traveling in Ghana while her city burned. The seemingly AI-generated music video that accompanies the song goes on to show potholed streets lined with homeless encampments and garbage. A muscular Pratt in a T-shirt and black jeans is shown walking Bass out of town in a garbage can; salsa dancing with his famous wife, Heidi Montag, as supporters with American and Mexican flags cheered; and use a broom to sweep up trash and tent cities. “Sweep that nonsense away quick,” someone sings, “because this scandalous show can’t last.”
A popular outsider’s brand of using a broom to sweep up corporate messes has a precedent in California: The most recent Republican to win any state office here, Arnold Schwarzenegger, campaigned with his own broom, promising to clean house in Sacramento and sweep away special interests. His 2003 bid for governor was a rare example of a grassroots campaign that won without vilifying immigrants or minorities. Instead, the bad “others” were politicians and bureaucrats.
Schwarzenegger’s strategy energized Californians who wanted to punish incumbent Democrats, but avoided scaring the state’s majority voters. If Pratt wants a chance at victory, he would do well to keep threading the same needle, casting a Democratic party strong enough to generate large turnouts among Republicans and independents who would normally participate in the Los Angeles mayoral primary, while taking care to avoid the kind of bigotry or racism that would alienate many voters. In other words, Pratt needs to avoid looking like a right-wing populist, Donald Trump—who is far less popular in LA than in America as a whole.
So far, Pratt has been able to deliver strong attacks while avoiding MAGA-style racism, sexism, and xenophobia. An ad that he posted on his X account on Friday include pictures of modern Los Angeles that he says he will bring and that feature a variety of the city’s residents. It’s not an ad that seems to lean towards the white nationalist wing of the populist right; rather, it is consistent with attitudes toward diversity that are prevalent among Angelenos. In another advertisement published last weekPratt showed that he knows how to attack his opponents without coming across as aggressive or unhinged. He stands outside an expensive-looking house and says, “This is where Mayor Bass lives. See something? Or here, where Nithya Raman’s $3 million mansion sits. They don’t have to live in the mess they made, where you live.” Illustrations were reduced to homeless encampments, graffiti and fire. “This is where I live,” he continues, standing in front of the Airstream trailer where he moved after his $2.5 million home was destroyed. “They let my house burn down. I know what the consequences of leadership failure are.”
Still, both right-wing politicians and their supporters have the perverse temptation to fight a culture war instead of focusing on running a campaign. Another one viral pro-Pratt ad, not produced by Pratt’s own campaignit clearly shows the dangers of popular energy. It starts with Mayor Bass portrayed as a version of the Joker portrayed by Heath Ledger in the movie. Dark Night: a psychopath who aims to deliberately sow mayhem and violence to disrupt and destroy the city. The AI seems now to be superhuman in its ability to mix visual metaphors, because as the ad goes, Bass isn’t just the Joker; he is also the judge presiding over an event intended to evoke the court of the nobility at Versailles. He is surrounded by California Governor Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris––and they are served by masked thugs in black military uniforms that say. DSA. The masked robbers placed a tearful middle-aged woman in front of Bass, Newsom and Harris. The woman is asking for help for homeless drug addicts. Everyone laughs. Newsom replies, “Look, if you were a transgender immigrant I could give you a free ass.”
Before 2015, that announcement would have struck almost everyone as disturbing and confusing. Today, it didn’t just go viral on social media; it was republished by Pratt himself on X and hailed as an excellent ad by many Republicans, including such notables as Ted Cruz and Matt Gaetz. “Perhaps the best political ad of the year,” Jeb Bush said. LA-based essayist and podcaster Meghan Daum, a liberal activist who supports Pratt’s candidacy, had a more sane take: “I understand that people here are excited about these ads,” she said. wrote on X“but they’re going to hate the undecided voters that Pratt needs to reach, many of whom will think they’re coming straight from the campaign trail. Be smarter, folks.”
Bass campaign calls Pratt a Trump lookalike; a the spokesman said that he was doing his “best Trump impression” in the ad where he stood outside his and Raman’s homes. Another outdoor adwhich is also celebrated by some of Pratt’s fans online, puts new lyrics to “California Dreamin’,” with Trump whistling in front of California signs. Associating Pratt with the movement to elect him and Trump, among the most hated political figures in Los Angeles, can only damage his campaign, and Pratt himself seems to have this. “I don’t do national politics,” he told an interviewer recently. “I don’t do ethnic politics. I don’t talk about other states. I’ve lived in it.”
Democrats, for their part, are giving Pratt a clear opportunity. Bass himself he agrees that the city of Los Angeles is badly governed. In last week’s debate, the moderators asked about billions of local and state dollars for homelessness that were allegedly misused. Bass responded, “I don’t think it’s surprising that you find corruption in such a large program, and I think it’s very important to hold them fully accountable.” Raman said, “There is no accountability in the city”––that “even when we spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year,” there are no employees to make sure that every dollar is “spent properly,” because “the city has not invested in management.”
When the moderator at last week’s debate asked Pratt why he should be trusted to manage a multi-billion dollar budget, given his lack of experience, his response was that consultants would help him with accounting. “My job is to be, as crazy as this is going to sound—I’m an adult in this room as Spencer Pratt,” he said in a moment of masterful self-awareness. “That’s what it’s come to.” Adult leadership is particularly unpopular with civil rights lobbyists who enjoy waging culture wars. But whatever candidate can deliver will deliver what the city’s voters want.
