“If you were rolling around town, you’d think, No mayor, right?” comedian John Mulaney joked of Los Angeles in 2024. Indeed, the sprawling, nearly four-million-person metropolis that is the City of Angels really can feel somewhat ungovernable, especially in the year since the LA wildfires leveled entire neighborhoods and ICE began targeting the city’s immigrant communities. Yet that very context has paved the way for a highly publicized mayoral primary with several key contenders. Here, a breakdown.

The Progressives

LA’s most direct answer to a figure like recently elected New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is likely Rae Huang, a Presbyterian minister, single mother, and daughter of Taiwanese immigrants whose platform has centered on creating free public transit and more accessible childcare.

“Our campaign is rooted in certain principles and values, namely that power belongs to the people, and our city’s current system of governance does not invite systems-impacted communities and regular Angelenos to the table,” a representative for Huang’s campaign told Vogue, naming climate justice organization Sunrise Movement LA, decarceration advocacy group La Defensa, and Black Lives Matter LA founder Dr. Melina Abdullah as endorsers that the campaign is particularly proud of.

But Huang isn’t the only leftist in the race; she’s up against fellow Democrat Nithya Raman, who co-founded the SELAH Neighborhood Homelessness Coalition before serving as executive director of Time’s Up Entertainment. As an LA City Council member who has represented the 4th District since 2020, however, Raman has more experience navigating the ins and outs of local LA governance; in 2025, she got the City Council to pass her motion to strengthen the city’s rent stabilization ordinance for the first time in 40 years.

Raman has garnered support from celebrities including Mindy Kaling, Adam Scott, and Parks and Recreation creator Michael Schur—not surprising, since she’s married to comedy writer Vali Chandrasekaran and has been vocal about bringing film and TV production back to LA. But her base goes beyond the Hollywood set: “I’m proud to be endorsed by tenant organizations like Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and the Park La Brea Residents Association and pro housing organizations like Abundant Housing LA and the Housing Action Coalition,” Raman told Vogue in a statement. “Our campaign is not funded by corporations. We are powered by thousands of Angelenos—renters, workers, immigrants, artists, and families who believe this city is worth fighting for. And as mayor, I will fight every day to make sure Los Angeles works for and belongs to the people who built it.”

The Incumbent

Karen Bass has enjoyed a storied career in US politics, co-chairing the Congressional Black Caucus for three of her 12 years in Congress and beating mayoral challenger Rick Caruso in November 2022. But her star has fallen somewhat in recent years—and particularly since the LA fires, during which many Angelenos criticized Bass’s lack of foresight. Indeed, a 2025 LA Times report found Bass’s office responsible for trying to downplay the city and LAFD’s failures in wildfire response. (Bass’s campaign did not respond to Vogue’s request for comment.)

The Wildcard

And then there’s the Spencer Pratt of it all. Pratt, the onetime star of The Hills turned crystal merchant, has emerged as a conservative candidate for LA mayor, announcing his run exactly a year after he and his wife, Heidi Montag, lost their home in the Palisades fires.

Public figures including LA Lakers governor Jeanie Buss, singer Katharine McPhee, and Donald Trump (as well as the Silver Lake bar Tenants of the Trees) have already thrown their weight behind Pratt, who has called for increases to the LAPD’s budget. But some moderate Democrats are also joining his base, with one registered Democrat—a Los Feliz-based screenwriter who declined to share her identity—telling the independent digital news outlet L.A. Material: “There’re little, secret groups that are forming, but I wouldn’t announce it if I was with a group of seven people eating out for dinner.”

The unique aesthetics of Pratt’s campaign have included combative anti-Raman ads plastering a wall opposite Siesta, the popular Silver Lake watering hole, and a giant billboard promising residents of Eagle Rock that Pratt would usher in “a new golden age for Los Angeles.”

Pratt’s campaign did not respond to Vogue's request for comment.

The State of the Race

As of Friday, May 29, Bass is polling at 26%, followed by Raman with 25% and Pratt at 22%. It’s still too early to say whether Bass will hold onto her mayoral title, cede it to Raman’s more progressive view, or hand over one of Los Angeles’s highest seats of power to a former reality star. No matter who’s mayor, though, LA’s vast and unpredictable political makeup will always feel impossible to distill—and, for some locals, there’s something strangely comforting about that.