Reality star Spencer Pratt put Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on notice as he surged into second place on Tuesday night in the city's explosive mayoral race - and vowed he was ready for a November election showdown.

The 42-year-old, who appeared on The Hills and is a registered Republican, was on course to do what Bass had been desperate to avoid: force the embattled incumbent into a runoff.

In Los Angeles mayoral elections, all candidates appear on the same ballot, no matter their party affiliation.

If one candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, they take the job outright. If nobody reaches that majority threshold, the top two finishers advance to a head-to-head runoff in November.

Bass may have finished first on Tuesday night - but she still failed to deliver a knockout blow against Pratt, whose campaign has been fueled by his $3 million home burning down in the 2025 Palisades Fire.

With roughly half the vote counted, Pratt - who in the 2000s was one of television's favorite villains - was sitting in second place and appeared well-positioned to join Bass on the November ballot, while progressive City Council member Nithya Raman trailed in third.

The Associated Press called the first runoff spot for Bass, but had not yet declared which challenger would face her in the fall as of Wednesday morning.

If Pratt holds onto second place, the November runoff will become a remarkable clash between a veteran Democratic politician and an outsider who turned his personal disaster into a full-blown bid to transform City Hall. 

Because California relies heavily on mail-in voting, Pratt's position could still shift as ballots postmarked by Election Day continue to arrive and are counted. Democratic-leaning late ballots could narrow his lead over Raman, meaning it could be days or weeks before the results are confirmed.

But outside Don Antonio's, the Mexican restaurant where Pratt held a private election night party, the reality star sounded like a man already preparing for battle.

'She knows it's on,' Pratt told reporters. 'I hope she's ready. I literally could not be more excited.'

He added that he was 'confident' he could win over some of Bass's supporters, even though Democrats outnumber Republicans by about three to one in Los Angeles and the city's political establishment is expected to rally hard behind the mayor if Pratt is confirmed as her opponent.

Pratt also said he wanted another chance to face Bass on the debate stage.

'We can do debates every Friday if she would like,' he said.

His campaign has been built around rage at City Hall after the 2025 Palisades Fire destroyed his family home and left many residents furious over the city's response.

Pratt got a boost from user-created AI videos and his own team's creative ads, in which the reality veteran pledged to be a change agent who would take on the city's massive homeless problem. 

He has accused Bass of failing Los Angeles on wildfires, homelessness, public safety and basic services, casting himself as the outsider who will tear through bureaucracy and shake up a city he says has been allowed to decay.

His platform calls for a sweeping audit of emergency infrastructure, a streamlined chain of command for disasters and faster permitting so fire victims and small businesses can rebuild without being trapped in City Hall delays.

On homelessness, Pratt is pushing what he calls a treatment-first approach, saying city money should be redirected toward mental health care, drug treatment and stabilization services.

He has also vowed to back police, recruit and retain more LAPD officers, crack down on retail theft and organized crime, and hold law enforcement leadership to measurable standards. 

Bass - who was at an embassy cocktail party in Ghana when fires were raging in the city last year, according to the LA Times - also attracted an opponent from her political left, Raman, a progressive member of LA's City Council. 

Bass, a former congresswoman and the first African-American woman to be Los Angeles mayor, characterized herself as a steady hand who has made progress on homelessness and lowering crime.

The mayor addressed her supporters early on Tuesday night, as the returns indicated that she would advance to a runoff.

'We're going to build a city where parents and kids do not have to navigate tents, because in the nation's second-largest city, there should never be anybody that is sleeping on our streets,' she said. 

'We are a city that can deal with this, and we have been doing this, and we are going to continue,' she pledged. 

More broadly, she promised to do more if voters gave her another four years. 

'We want to bring change to our city, and that's what we've been doing, and that's what we're going to continue to do,' she said. 

Raman entered the mayoral race in February, just hours before the filing deadline, despite previously being a political ally of Bass. 

She was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, who saw success in New York City with the election of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who easily won the general election in November. 

'Los Angeles deserves a mayor that doesn't drag their feet. Karen Bass promised change. Instead, Angelenos got delays,' Raman promised in a social media post leading up to Election Day. 

Pratt entered the race on January 7, the anniversary of the devastating Palisades fire. 

Since then, he's held Bass's feet to the fire - including with ads where he rapped to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, showing footage of the remains of his home, and where he told voters: 'They let my home burn down. I know the consequences of failed leadership.'

During their one meeting on the debate stage, Pratt said of Bass: 'I blame this person for burning my house down.' 

A subsequent debate was canceled when Raman pulled out after Bass had already done so. 

The reality TV star told voters that a vote for Raman was just another vote for Bass's failed policies. 

Pratt also pledged to 'get the golden age of Los Angeles back,' echoing President Donald Trump's promise that his second term would be a 'golden age' for America.

But the registered Republican has tried to keep national politics at an arm's distance, downplaying positive comments Trump made about his run and the assertion the President made that Pratt was a 'MAGA person.' 

'I'm a big nobody person,' he replied when asked about Trump's comments by LA's ABC7. 

In another interview, he said his core constituency was 'mothers.' 

On the ballot, no candidates are listed with their party affiliation.  

Still, Pratt had a tall order in a heavily Democratic city - the last time a Republican was elected mayor was 1997. 

And some of Pratt's previous statements and interviews became campaign fodder. 

When he appeared on CNN with Jake Tapper last week, the newsman asked him about appearing on right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones's show in 2009, where he agreed that 9/11 was '100 percent' an inside job. 

Pratt chalked up the comments to being 'young and naive,' with the 42-year-old then saying what he's learned since is that 'it's actually the negligence of the people in power.' 

'I would have loved to have gone along with, when my house burned down and my parents' house burned down, everyone saying, 'It was lasers! It was a land grab! It was just like Maui!' But it's not,' he said. 'The reality is, people in charge fail us as taxpayers.' 

Pratt also appeared to rebound after TMZ revealed he had been staying at the swanky Hotel Bel-Air, not the Airstream trailer he had used in his campaign ads. 

The candidate's head of security told the Daily Mail that 'credible threats' to Pratt's life forced him to stay at the more secure facility, while Montag and the couple's two sons were staying outside of LA in Carpinteria.  

Beyond Trump - and while 2024 Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, an LA resident, backed Bass - an assortment of celebrities and reality stars have endorsed Pratt.

They include Joe Rogan, Laguna Beach veteran Kristin Cavallari, Tom Schwartz of Vanderpump Rules, Dennis Quaid, Millionaire Matchmaker Patti Stanger and Kelsey Grammer. 

Ahead of Election Day, despite polls showing Pratt in third place behind the two Democrats, the reality star predicted an outright victory. 

But by late Tuesday, he was reframing his second-place positioning as unthinkable even just months ago. 

Still, the numbers will be daunting for Pratt if he advances to take on Bass.

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