Spencer Pratt waged an unexpected mayoral challenge against incumbent Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Democratic Socialist ally Nithya Raman, ultimately falling just short to the DSA-backed candidate.
Best known for his years in reality television, Pratt found a political following among Angelenos who feel overlooked, including parents worried about rising crime, and came close enough to reaching the general election to unsettle parts of the city’s progressive establishment.
Although Pratt’s bid for Los Angeles mayor has ended, he says his involvement in politics is far from over.
In his first in-depth exclusive interview since Raman’s late surge of mail-in ballots controversially kept him out of the November runoff, Pratt pledged to continue advocating for the city that shaped him.
While sharply critical of California’s voting process, Pratt also said he has been deeply moved by the support his campaign received.
Read the full exclusive interview below.
It’s now a few weeks after the results of the election. How are you feeling?
“I feel energized. The California voting system is absurd, and it’s making voters check out, because — right or wrong — they don’t trust the system, so I think I’m the outlier, a lot of people feel demoralized, and I hate to see that.”
Do you think it was a fair election?
“There is a lot of evidence of fraud that needs to be investigated, but evidence is not the same thing as proof, so we must avoid drawing conclusions until we have proof of malfeasance. Regardless, everyone agrees that this system does not inspire any confidence. The ridiculous universal mail-in voting system, which was slipped in under the premise of a pandemic long since passed, leaves way too many openings for fraud. There are too many human hands touching the ballot in between the voter and the tabulator. Whether or not there was any fraud, we will see. But this system is the Wild West, so it’s essentially impossible to audit for fraud.”
What needs to change?
“The Supreme Court is likely to rule that collecting ballots after Election Day is not kosher, so that will be changing soon, and that’s a good thing. Slow counting is a red flag for tomfoolery, so it’s good to eliminate that. Ultimately, if we want to balance maximal voter turnout with maximal security, we need to scrap all mail-in ballots and vote by phone. We all have smartphones with biometric ID. It’s secure enough for banking, we do taxes, medical records, TSA, it’s good enough for voting. Every vote would go onto a public ledger, and you’d have a personal identifier code so your vote would still be secret, but you can use your key to check on the public ledger, and not only validate that your vote was counted, but every item and candidate for which you voted was properly logged. Plus, you’d have an instant tally the moment a vote is cast. Zero counting required. Eight p.m. on election night, you have results.
There’s zero excuse to not do this.”
You were up against a machine, you were a small team — anything you would change in your campaign?
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“We punched way outside our weight class. Adam Miller has administrative experience, he’s run a homeless nonprofit organization, he pumped millions into his own campaign, and he couldn’t crack 4%. Without any administrative experience, in a deep-blue city, for me to pull over 200K votes is miraculous, especially with the media giving a pass to the two candidates who are currently in power and responsible for all our problems, while hectoring the civilian candidate with zero institutional power, simply because I posed a threat to the corrupt power structure. Hopefully the media will actually ask my opponents some real questions with the skepticism and rigor they applied to me!”
How was the election for you personally — the upsides and the downs?
“I have 217,000 votes and they’re still counting! That’s unthinkable for a C-List reality star crystal salesman.”
It is clear you tapped into a deep unhappiness in the community about leadership of LA and the state of our city — why are people so unhappy? Why do you think people were drawn to you?
“It’s very simple: Communists have destroyed the greatest city in the world. Los Angeles is a mess, downtown is completely dead, people are dying in the streets, it is beneath Third World status. That’s what you get when you let socialists run your government. It always ends up the same exact way. People are angry because communists ruined the City of Angels, and they were drawn to my campaign because I promised to put an end to the socialists’ mess.”
Fairly or unfairly, people before the election would have had a perception of who you are. Do you think they now have a clearer idea of who you are and has that been a positive from the election? How has that affected you ?
“I don’t worry about that. My only concern is everyone’s perception of how awful the socialists are. They are poison to a functioning society.”
What comes next for you after rest time with your family? What you want to do for this next phase of your life?
“I’ll rest when I’m dead. We are at war with socialism and I will keep hammering these corrupt politicians and force them to meet the needs of us Angelenos. I’m not going anywhere.”
You care so much about LA. What do you love about this city, what do you hate and what frustrates you?
“I love our history, I love Mexican food, I love our old Depression-era architecture. I hate the socialists who are erasing our history, running all the best restaurants out of town, and when they do allow any building to go on, it’s this depressing brutalist slopitecture.”
There is a perception in LA that after so many years of one-party rule, people are afraid to stand up and say what they think because it might affect their careers or ability to make money. Are people afraid to speak out against the status quo? If so, what’s the impact of that, and the solution?
“We had so many supporters behind the scenes, particularly Hollywood folks, who were too afraid to voice their support publicly. Regardless of the pressure, I can’t respect that kind of cowardice; they’re letting communists destroy their city all because they’re afraid some disingenuous malcontent might call them a meanie.”
What is your message now to LA, to California?
“Stop the socialists before they finish you off.”
