Spencer Pratt — the 2000s reality TV star turned 2010s online influencer turned 2020s populist firebrand — is now a formidable candidate in the L.A. mayoral race, gauged by fundraising totals, poll numbers and incoming criticism from chief rivals. This ascent is a shock for the city’s liberal establishment, which considers him an unqualified clown. It shouldn’t be.

His reactionary run, a revivalist pitch to make the city “once again ‘camera-ready’ for all its citizens” by cracking down on crime and corruption, has gained traction with his rollout of a slick and mischievous digital strategy. It culminated in a recent campaign ad rollout riffing on Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” to knock his competitors, incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and progressive L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman. The button on the spot was a callback to his own Act I inciting incident — how his house burnt down in last year’s Pacific Palisades wildfire as a result, he insists, of government incompetence.

Pratt posted his most revealing meme three days earlier, on April 26: Himself embodying Michael Douglas’ put-upon worker on the poster of Falling Down. That’s Joel Schumacher’s 1993 revenge thriller about a fed-up white Angeleno who embarks on a violent odyssey across an alienating urban hellscape to reunite with his daughter. Pratt reproduced the tagline — “The adventure of an ordinary man at war with the everyday world” — but edited out the character’s wielding of a pump-action shotgun. (Douglas’ protagonist is a laid-off contractor in the then-collapsing local defense sector; as it happens, Pratt’s grandfather was employed as a military engineer for a Southern California defense firm.)

Pratt’s channeling of Falling Down is apt. After all, the film is a straightforward parable about the attempt to reassert authority amid chaos. It was released the last time L.A. was at its nadir, battered by natural disasters, economic woes and the widespread civic unrest that followed the verdict in Rodney King’s police beating.

For generations, and with few exceptions, the city has been defined by liberal ethos and Democratic Party machine politics. Even brand-name billionaire developer Rick Caruso’s $100 million-plus campaign war chest and spin on latter-day Rockefeller Republicanism couldn’t win him the mayoralty last go-around. Yet within this sprawling bubble, L.A. has long cultivated consequential strains of backlash, from Howard Jarvis’ tax revolt to the xenophobia of Stephen Miller, who currently oversees the White House’s anti-immigration policies.

Now there’s Pratt, a figure whose candidacy has been embraced by a broad swath of right-oriented media spanning the Murdochs’ key outlets to the biggest online influencers (both Joe Rogan and Adam Carolla have endorsed him). Pratt first made his name as a villain on MTV for, among other gambits, rumormongering about an alleged sex tape involving his co-star. He was still cashing in on his notoriety as recently as January when he published a tell-all memoir that reads like the ultimate oppo file, full of character self-assassinating disclosures about his personal and professional life.

None of this appears to matter much to Pratt’s supporters, who like President Donald Trump’s MAGA base see him as an improbable savior and imperfect vessel whose shock-value messaging — on fraud, waste, bureaucracy and other municipal ills — is validating. Exhibit A: Other candidates speak of various humanizing technocratic approaches to help the “homeless,” and some opt for the euphemized term “unhoused.” Meanwhile Pratt, believing improperly treated drug addiction to be the core problem, often refers to them as “zombies” when making his case that enforcement against street encampments has been bungled.

The prominent L.A.-based culture critic Meghan Daum, whose work often targets liberal pieties, announced on Apr. 26 that she’s voting for Pratt, citing his directness about the encampments. “We want to be in a place of reality,” she said. “People are ready for a no-bullshit era and Spencer Pratt may be the one to usher it in.”

Pratt’s campaign donors range from law firm partners, mid-level studio executives and small business owners to aestheticians, police officers and retirees. According to city disclosure filings, they also include former Lakers leader Jeanie Buss, actress turned anti-vaccine activist Jenny McCarthy, realtor-to-the-stars Kurt Rappaport, reality TV producer Jeff Jenkins (Keeping Up with the Kardashians) and OANN host Ginger Gaetz — wife of controversial former GOP House Rep. Matt Gaetz and sister of Southern California arms-manufacturing billionaire Palmer Luckey.

An insider industry set has increasingly embraced Pratt. On April 27, film producer Hilary Shor posted on Threads about a lunch that Larry David’s wife Ashley hosted at her house for the candidate. “Miracles do happen I am voting for him,” Shor wrote, adding that actress turned philanthropist Irena Medavoy “and many others were transfixed by the power of his message which hopefully will help save our town.”

Pratt shares with Trump, his fellow reality TV alum, a telegenic charisma that can swerve between anger and affability. Still, his outlook and shtick are perhaps most legible through a distinctly Angeleno lens. (Anyone who’s spent much time along the coast is familiar with the brah-litics of men with sunglasses perched atop their heads who profess their love for burritos, crystals, guns, flip-flops and their favorite blue-eyed blonde.) Pratt descends from Sam Yorty, L.A.’s 1960s populist mayor with a major law-and-order bent, and Wally George, the 1980s local TV host known for his combative critiques of what he perceived to be leftist excesses, fueled by an insult-driven humor.

The mayoral primary is a month away. A runoff election, held Nov. 3, is all but certain. Whether or not Pratt wins, the grievance politics and spectacle style of his candidacy is likely to define the remainder of the race.