Spencer Pratt has spent months waging aguerilla campaignagainst incumbent Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, riding the buzz generated by AI-generated videos, viral moments and some big-name supporters as he seeks to capitalize ondissatisfactionwith the way the city is being run.
He may now have five more months to make his case.
Bass secured a spot on the November ballot and Pratt wasrunning in second placeas of early Wednesday morning, ahead of progressive city councilwoman Nithya Raman and 11 lesser-known candidates as more ballots were being counted. No candidate appears likely to exceed the 50% threshold to win outright, which means the top two will meet head-to-head in the November election.
In the overwhelmingly Democratic city, Pratt, a former reality television star and registered Republican, would be the clear underdog against Bass, a former state lawmaker and congresswoman with support from the city’s labor unions.
Still, roughly three in five voters in Los Angeles sought to oust their mayor on Tuesday in the primary, in which candidates don’t have party labels.
“This idea that I don’t represent Democrats and Republicans and independents — anyone that’s just a Los Angeles citizen that wants basic quality of life — I’ll be able to show that in five months,” Pratt told reporters outside his private election night party.
“I’m an Angeleno who said, ‘Enough is enough,’ and I had to step up,” he said. “I’m going to show everybody that I’m their mayor.”
The election night party held by Bass was a show of force, featuring union heads, local Democratic officials and business leaders — a coalition that underscored the political reality now facing Pratt in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by about a four-to-one margin.
She claimed progress on addressing homelessness, pointing to 42,000 affordable housing units now underway that Bass vowed would be finished by the end of her second term, as well as efforts to improve public safety by fixing sidewalks and installing 60,000 streetlights.
“We can have the city that we know we all deserve,” she said. “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. We are a city that can deal with this, and we have been doing it, and we are going to continue.”
Source: Drudge Report
