Spencer Pratt wants to be LA's next mayor — even as he's suing the city

LOS ANGELES (CN) — It’s hard to think of a less likely candidate for Los Angeles mayor than Spencer Pratt, a former reality TV villain with no political experience who’s suing the city he seeks to run.

And yet the 42-year-old Pratt, riding a wave of ill feelings toward Mayor Karen Bass, has a good chance of making the November runoff.

Pratt has much in common with President Donald Trump as Republican stars of reality show who share the ability to get away with offensive rhetoric. Pratt has a Trump-esque talent for capturing people’s attention and controlling the narrative of an election — at least on social media, which he and his supporters have flooded with cheaply made campaign videos that rely heavily on the use of artificial intelligence.

On Wednesday, Trump responded to a question about Pratt by praising him: “I’d like to see him do well. He’s a character. I heard he’s a big MAGA person. He’s doing well.” The comment confirmed what Pratt’s opponents have already been saying: Pratt’s political style, and perhaps some of his substance as well, is a descendant of Trump’s.

In the unlikely event that Pratt wins and becomes mayor, he would have another thing in common with the president: He’d be suing the government he heads, effectively suing himself, much as Trump did when he sued the IRS. That suit was settled earlier this week by the creation of a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate Trump’s allies who he believes were wrongly investigated or prosecuted — a deal many see as corrupt self-dealing.

When asked if Pratt’s campaign sets up the possibility of a similar scenario in Los Angeles, his attorney, Peter McNulty, said his client would be different.

“I’ve known Spencer Pratt since he was in Crossroads,” McNulty said, referring to the expensive private high school that Pratt attended. He and his wife, Heidi, “are absolutely ethical. They recognize if Spencer becomes mayor, he has to put that first. And I think he will.”

The lawyer went on, perhaps speculating a bit: “He’d have to almost have a Chinese wall set up, so anything he would doing in the mayor’s office would be have to be independent of any of the litigation going on on behalf of himself.” He would also, McNulty said, have to “recuse himself from certain decisionmaking” around the lawsuit.

Pratt is just is one of some 5,000 Palisades residents suing LA, California, the Department of Water and Power and other entities over their role in the devastating wildfire last year that burned down their homes and wiped away most of their neighborhood.

Although Pratt has publicly blamed Bass for allowing his home to burn down, in court documents he blames the Department of Water and Power, a utility controlled by mayoral appointees.. A nearby reservoir had been empty, awaiting repairs to its cover. Pratt and others say the empty reservoir contributed to low water pressure, which inhibited firefighters’ ability to combat the Palisades blaze.

“The Palisades Fire was an inescapable and unavoidable consequence of the water supply system servicing areas in and around Pacific Palisades as it was planned and constructed,” Pratt and other plaintiffs wrote in their complaint, first filed filed Jan. 21, 2025, before the blaze was fully contained. “The system necessarily failed.”

That suit was consolidated with many others into a mass tort, currently in discovery. It has already survived demurrers from both the city and the state, and is proceeding to a trial.

Pratt recently referred to the lawsuit in an interview with podcaster Adam Carolla.

“I’m going to win the win the lawsuit,” Pratt said. “And with that money, if I’m the mayor of Los Angeles, I will rebuild. If Karen Bass gets reelected, or Nithya gets elected,” referring to the other major candidate in the race, democratic socialist Nithya Raman. “I will be done with trying to live in LA … I’ll go find somewhere that my kids will not have to see naked zombies, and I can have the last American dream somewhere, but I will not rebuild if these people are in charge.”

A recent poll by Emerson College had Bass coming in first place with 35% of likely voters. Pratt and Raman were tied, each with 23%. Despite her relatively low approval rating, Bass would be heavily favored in a two-way runoff with Pratt, given LA’s Democratic leanings. The city hasn’t had a Republican mayor in 25 years, since Richard Riordan left office — and he was a moderate, in an era of higher-than-ever crime. Today, the per-capita homicide rate is lower than it’s been since 1959.

Though his campaign may have gotten its impetus from the fires, its driving force has been the promise to take a tougher line on homelessness, which he claims is less the result of a housing crisis and more the visible signs of a drug epidemic, often referring to people living on the streets as violent, fentanyl-addicted “zombies.”

“The reality is, no matter how many beds you give these people, they are on super meth,” Pratt said during the campaign’s only televised debate. “They are on fentanyl. The DEA statistic says 93% of this is a drug addiction problem. I will go below the Harbor Freeway tomorrow with [Raman] and we can find some of these people she’s going to offer treatment for. She’s going to get stabbed in the neck.”

Pratt has promised to force homeless people into drug treatment programs, while Raman has said that what they really need is housing.

The timing of Pratt’s pronouncements on homelessness may strike some as odd. The number of people living without a home in the city rose for years and year, peaking in 2023 at roughly 46,000 people. During the Covid-19 pandemic, large homeless encampments filled up parks and freeway underpasses. But those tent villages are far more seldomly seen these days, and the number of unhoused people in the city has dropped, albeit modestly, for two years in a row, down to around 43,000.

“Homelessness is a top issue, but it’s not the number one issue any more,” said Democratic political consultant Mike Trujillo. “The affordability crisis is the number one issue.”

Another Democratic political consultant, Bill Carrick, agreed.

“The anger, it’s part of the same package that we’re seeing on the national level,” Carrick said. “People are feeling the pressure of the economic problems. Here, they associate that with city government, for whatever reason.”

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