Days out from L.A.’s mayoral primary, the reality TV villain turned online crystal merchant Spencer Pratt is one of the frontrunning candidates in the race. Imagine reading that sentence a citywide election cycle ago.

The town’s crises — chief among them rampant homelessness and departing film and TV production — have created an opening for Pratt, who emerged as a populist firebrand after his family’s house burned down in the January 2025 Palisades Fire. A registered Republican, his insult-fueled outrage over what he characterizes as systemic incompetence has morphed into a law-and-order campaign that’s rattled the local liberal Democratic establishment.

Pratt’s key rivals are incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and her progressive challenger, Nithya Raman, a city councilwoman repping an industry-heavy district stretching from Sherman Oaks across the Hollywood Hills to Silver Lake. The top two vote getters advance to a Nov.  3 runoff.

Bass’ standing is weak across the electorate post-fires even as Hollywood’s crew unions and other labor groups have endorsed her. Yet she retains a lead in polls and sees Pratt — a political novice regarded as a joke at City Hall who released a tell-all memoir that reads like an oppo file just before entering the race — as easier to beat. So, too, do her union allies at the deep-pocketed L.A. County Federation of Labor, which paid for a pseudo attack ad against him that Raman called a “cynical” attempt to ice her out and boost Pratt’s chances.

Pratt’s ascent, which plays like a lost plotline from Richard Kelly’s black comedy Southland Tales, is thanks in large part to his history with Hollywood. Not just the celebrity name ID or donor network but the proverbial 10,000 hours he spent over decades mastering modern media, first in front of cameras on unscripted TV, then cultivating relationships with audiences by livestreaming on social platforms as an influencer.

Pratt’s proved to be both an effective producer as well as distributor of digital agitprop. He’s made noise with vigilante flavored, bleakly satiric messaging that references The Dark Knight and Falling Down, as well as a caustic riff on Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” His campaign is also paying online “clippers,” creators who edit longform content into viral memes, to promote everything from his zingers on popular video podcasts (Joe Rogan, All In) to his best emotional-appeal moments onstage during the recent televised mayoral debate.

Pratt has drawn frequent comparisons to President Donald Trump, another reality TV veteran, who told reporters on May 20 that “I’d like to see him do well,” adding, “He’s a character.” Pratt has said he voted for Trump in 2024, spurred by his interest in owning guns. Veteran GOP operatives are running the former MTV star’s campaign. One example: His campaign has paid more than $60,000 so far to June Cutter, the executive director of America First California, the state chapter of a MAGA think tank and advocacy organization founded by former advisers to Trump.

Pratt’s own accounting of his personal finances would give most fiduciaries a stroke. “What’s money, really?” he wrote in his memoir. “Just energy moving in and out of your life.” This from the man aiming to root out perceived fraud in a city with a $14 billion annual budget.

None of this appears to concern his growing list of prominent donors: Lucian Grainge, Dan Loeb, Haim Saban, Brian Grazer, Bobby Kotick, Jeanie Buss, Sean Rad, Mark Pincus, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. They believe in Pratt’s pitch to make L.A. “once again ‘camera-ready’ for all its citizens.”

So, too, an industry cohort that sees him as Hollywood’s hometown savior: Larry David’s wife, Ashley, hosted an event for the candidate at their home. Likewise, David Foster, whose wife, Katharine McPhee — also a donor — serenaded Pratt during a fundraiser in the couple’s L.A. backyard with a rendition of Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best.”

When The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Pratt in October about his outspokenness in the aftermath of the Palisades wildfire, he claimed he had no interest in electoral politics, only public policy reform. A few months later, Pratt entered the race. Yet what was already clear at the time was an untapped market primed for his unexpected pivot to seriousness about civics.

He’d just launched an online talk show with his wife, Heidi Montag, where his initial guests included former L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, a disowned Democrat embraced by Fox News for his tough-on-crime populism. It was easy to envision Pratt as another controversy-courting political media star.

Pratt, who gained fame as Montag’s bad boyfriend on the 2000s-era hit The Hills, had been frustrated of late by his inability to get back on the air with his family. “Technically, we are still alive at Hulu,” he told THR of a long-brewing project, noting hopefully at the time that the ongoing wildfire fallout and Montag’s singing career revival might rekindle interest. “I’m told by my fearless team at WME that not being passed on is a success nowadays.”

For Pratt, his run is the answer to the city’s problems — as well as his own. If he wins, his family can move into Getty House, the grand official mayoral residence in Hancock Park. Plus, now that one of pop culture’s most notorious figures (his book’s title: The Guy You Loved to Hate) has recast himself as an avenging hero in a real-life drama, he may finally be greenlit out of development hell. 

As Pratt rode high in the polls in mid-May, news surfaced that he and Montag had signed a deal with unscripted producer Boardwalk Pictures (Welcome to Wrexham, Cheer) for a show following the family through the campaign and, if elected, his term in office. His rep says that “there is no signed contract” and “nothing has been pitched,” but stranger things have already happened in L.A. 

This story appeared in the May 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.