Los Angeles is no stranger to drama. But the rapid ascension of a former reality TV bad boy turned political candidate taking on an incumbent mayor is a plot twist that has broken through far beyond the hills of Hollywood.

Spencer Pratt, best known for his role on the 2006 reality TV hit The Hills, is seeking to tap into the deep frustration of many Angelenos over a searing cost-of-living crisis and the slow pace of recovery following last year’s deadly wildfires.

Recent polls have placed him second in the race, trailing the current mayor, Karen Bass, but ahead of the progressive two-term city councilor Nithya Raman. He’s received an endorsement from Joe Rogan and praise from Elon Musk and Fox News hosts all while his ads dominate TikTok and X feeds around the US.

But how is it that a reality TV villain turned entrepreneur, and former registered Republican, has become a viable candidate for the role of chief executive of the US’s second-largest, and deep blue, city?

The nonpartisan race is not a typical Democrat-versus-Republican battle, but a referendum on the state of the city. And polling has found that the majority of residents feel it is headed in the wrong direction.

Los Angeles faces major challenges, including an intractable homelessness crisis with nearly 44,000 unhoused people. It remains one of the most expensive cities in the US for renters and homebuyers, and is short 270,000 affordable housing units. Hollywood is struggling and the Trump administration’s deportation campaign has hit the region hard. All the while, Los Angeles is battling a budget shortfall and preparing for large-scale global events, including the World Cup this summer and the 2028 Olympics.

While Bass has touted an effective homelessness strategy as among her achievements as mayor, including a 17.5% reduction in people living on the streets, many Angelenos remain frustrated at the staggering scale of the crisis.

“The city has been living through this fiasco of homelessness now for many years without any strong results,” said Sara Sadhwani, a political science professor at Pomona College. “We know that the data says that things are getting a little better, but people don’t feel it when they walk around the streets.”

And, she added, that’s “compounded by the affordability crisis that is just crushing across the nation”.

Pratt’s candidacy is also representative of a second element of unhappiness with Bass’s leadership. The January 2025 wildfires, which killed at least 19 people in Altadena and 12 in the Pacific Palisades, traumatized the city, and Bass has been heavily criticized for the preparations, and the pace of recovery. More than 4,000 homes were destroyed in the Palisades, and just 10 have been rebuilt, according to a Politico analysis. Pratt, who grew up in the Palisades, lost his home in the fire. He’s filmed ads in front of an Airstream trailer on his burnt-out lot.

Political analysts say it’s unlikely the race will be decided next month and instead the top two candidates will advance to a runoff in November. Now the city waits to see how the growing dissatisfaction and anti-establishment sentiment will translate into the election.

“It’s a wide-open race for who’s going to be in the runoff. And then we’ll see,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, the director of the Los Angeles initiative at UCLA Luskin’s School of Public Affairs.

As he campaigns, Pratt is seeking to introduce himself to voters beyond what they might remember about him from reality television. Earlier this year, he published a memoir, The Guy You Loved to Hate: Confessions from a Reality TV Villain. It’s far from the standard fare typically authored by politicians ahead of an election.

The book described his idyllic childhood in the affluent community of the Palisades, where he grew up among the children of the famous and wealthy and school pickups looked like a “red-carpet event”. The child of a dentist and a homemaker, he studied political science at the University of Southern California and created and produced a short-lived reality TV show before joining The Hills as the fiery and despised boyfriend of Heidi Montag (now Pratt).

The couple came to take center stage in some of the most dramatic, and iconic, storylines on the show. Over the years, Pratt has said repeatedly that he was playing a role largely directed by production, and that he was genuinely surprised when people believed he was the bad guy they saw on screen. In his memoir, he wrote that he was often lured into doing things he wasn’t comfortable with by promises of larger payoffs and luxe housing.

The couple became proto-influencers and tabloid fixtures, with photos of their wedding and Montag’s extensive plastic surgery dominating covers for years in deals that paid handsomely. They spent vast sums on designer goods, he wrote. The book also includes an anecdote about how as a college student he once sold photos he had taken from a friend who dated Mary-Kate Olsen to support a film he was making.

As they became more famous, the couple came to occupy a place of derision in popular culture. An NBC executive maligned them as “everything that’s wrong with America”. In the waning months of the Obama era, the publication Salon asked its readers to identify who had said a handful of outrageous quotes, including “If you want to throw missiles, I’m throwing a nuke. This is how I operate” – Donald Trump or Spencer Pratt?

“The two outrageous reality TV stars have more in common than spray tans – but at least Pratt isn’t running for office,” reads the article from November 2015.

In recent years, the couple had enjoyed a sort of redemption arc. They documented their family life on social media, and Pratt came across as a self-deprecating dad who loved his wife and hummingbirds (his adoration and frequent posts of the animal prompted an Audubon Magazine profile). He routinely shared his love for Erewhon burritos online, gaining enough attention that the upscale grocery store named one after him. Meanwhile, Pratt also ran a crystal business as the family raised their children in the community he’d grown up in.

And then came the fires. In January 2025, deadly blazes tore through the hillside neighborhoods of Altadena and the Pacific Palisades, destroying 13,000 homes in the worst fires the region had ever experienced.

Pratt shared moving videos of the remnants of his home in the Palisades and his son’s burned bed, and described the pain of being displaced. His experience as a fire victim captured the public’s attention – his wife’s 2010 album reached No 1 on iTunes after he encouraged followers who wanted to offer support to the family to download her music.

In the weeks after the fire, he began to post more critically, sharing frustrations from neighbors about the reopening of the community, issues with insurance coverage and the EPA’s decision to use a parking lot at a state beach to process hazardous materials. The move drew protests at the time, although the agency said it was taking protective measures and that the site was “highly controlled”.

The Pratts and other homeowners sued the city, accusing the Los Angeles department of water and power (LADWP) of not maintaining the water supply necessary to fight the fire and arguing it was an “inescapable and unavoidable consequence of egregious failure of the water supply system servicing areas in and around Pacific Palisades”.

In response to an inquiry from the Guardian, the LADWP pointed at earlier statements about its water system and the pending litigation in which the agency said its water system “met and continues to meet all fire codes”.

“While our crews and system were prepared for situations that might strain the system, no urban water system is designed to combat a massive, wind-driven wildfire of the speed and scale presented by the historically destructive Palisades fire, particularly in conditions that preclude aerial firefighting support,” the agency said in an April 2025 statement.

Pratt ultimately became one of the loudest and most visible critics of the local government’s handling of the disaster. He criticized the city and state’s approach to the rebuild, brought attention to what he argued were misspent relief funds, and denounced legislation in Sacramento. Mayor Bass, Gavin Newsom’s office and other Democrats argued that Pratt amplified misinformation about the Palisades fire and proposed bills on social media.

Last summer, Pratt went to Washington to meet with federal officials to discuss the fire and to support a congressional investigation into the matter. In January, on the first anniversary of the blaze that destroyed the Palisades, he announced his campaign for mayor, arguing the city was broken and he would “expose the system”.

Pratt’s campaign did not respond to a request for an interview.

In addition to greater disaster preparation, Pratt has said he would enforce laws to ensure sidewalks and parks are clear of encampments, and institute a “treatment first” model to address homelessness. Los Angeles and California as a whole have adopted the housing-first approach, a proven method for reducing homelessness that posits people on the street first need safe housing, not conditioned on treatment or employment requirements, in order to stabilize.

Pratt can come across as Trumpian, with derisive nicknames for opponents, criticism of journalists and references to “drug zombies”. His ads have traveled far and wide, capturing social media users across both coasts. One starkly compares the homes of Bass and Raman with a street lined with tents, and finally a trailer on his own burnt-out empty lot as Pratt says, “This is where I live.” The trailer has been subject to a wave of news coverage after TMZ reported that Pratt was not living on the property, but at the Hotel Bel-Air. Pratt was unmoved by the report, arguing that he moved to the hotel after receiving death threats.

He also told the outlet: “I don’t have a house. They burned it down.”

Another ad, made by an independent film-maker with AI but shared by the candidate, depicts Pratt as Batman on his way to save the city while showing Bass, Raman and Newsom as laughing elites in a royal court as guards identified as “DSA” rough up concerned citizens.

Pratt’s campaign has resonated with fire survivors like Nina Madok. “Spencer Pratt lost his house just like I did,” she said. “He has that empathy and has the boots on the ground so he can see exactly what happened in the Palisades and what needs to happen.”

Madok, who is on the advisory board of the Palisades Recovery Coalition, said that the organization would like the rebuilding process to move thoughtfully but more quickly and wants to see whoever is in office prioritize that.

While she is a Republican, Madok said she knows many Democrats who supported Kamala Harris and plan to vote for Pratt. He has kept the attention of his followers on the Palisades and appealed to the federal government and people appreciate that, she said.

Still, critics argue that Pratt lacks the experience and understanding necessary to run a city as large and as complex as Los Angeles with its powerful city council and multitude of local agencies. Bass told CNN her opponent does not have the “background or knowledge” of how the government works.

In response to a debate question about how his experience qualifies him to oversee the city and its nearly $15bn budget, Pratt said he has common sense and humility and would surround himself with the “smartest people” to manage city finances.

Pratt’s performance at a mayoral debate in early May appears to have bolstered his chances. A poll from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs published in early April had put Pratt second, with 25% of respondents backing the mayor, 11% supporting Pratt and 9% in favor of Raman (although that poll also noted about 40% of voters were undecided). Other candidates, including the tech entrepreneur Adam Miller and housing advocate and DSA member Rae Huang, have polled far lower.

An Emerson poll conducted after the debate found that 30% of participants backed Bass, 22% supported Pratt and 19% went to Raman.

During the forum, Pratt came across as a seasoned politician channeling the frustrations of many residents rather than a raw social media persona, Yaroslavsky said. Bass also held her own, he added.

“He didn’t come across as an extremist Maga Republican. He came across as a guy whose home was burned down in the Palisades and [who] is frustrated with the recovery and with all the other things that people have complaints about,” Yaroslavsky said.

And for his part, Pratt has said he is not a Maga Republican. He changed his party preference to independent, he recently told NBC LA, and said: “I don’t do national politics. I don’t do tribal politics.”

That’s important, Sadhwani said, because if he comes across as a Maga hardliner, his chances are slim. Yaroslavsky echoed the sentiment, arguing the most unpopular person in Los Angeles right now is Donald Trump.

Bass and other LA leaders had faced intense criticism for the city’s response and handling of the fire in the Palisades. People were particularly upset with the mayor, who was out of the country when the fires broke out. The scrutiny has continued – late last year the Los Angeles Times revealed that a controversial after-action report evaluating the department’s response to the wildfires was edited to understate the shortcomings of agency leadership and the city.

But while her approval ratings fell after the fire, the political tides turned when Trump sent immigration agents to Los Angeles.

Bass forcefully pushed back against the raids, celebrated the role of immigrants in the city and confronted agents at a city park.

“Trump sent her a life preserver, a political lifeline,” Yaroslavsky said.

And she has made headway as mayor, he said, confronting the homeless issue “head on” and achieve reductions. “Most people don’t believe it, but it’s true,” Yaroslavsky said.

For her to be polling at 25% so close to the election was not a good sign, he added, but Bass is resilient and tougher than people give her credit for.

“I wouldn’t write her political obituary anytime soon,” he said.

In 2017, Pratt, who was then enjoying the first wave of his redemption arc, told the New Yorker that Trump’s campaign had left him thinking, “Oh, shit, I can be President now. Do I want to be in the White House one day?”

Nearly a decade later, Pratt might be headed to city hall.