POLITICS

Spencer Pratt’s Mayoral Campaign Proves It Takes More Than Mastering the Algorithm to Get Elected

The influencer turned mayoral candidate built one of the strangest coalitions Los Angeles politics has seen in years by mastering the attention economy. But when the ballots arrived, Pratt discovered the limits of a strictly online movement fueled by AI videos and outrage.

By Maxwell AdlerJune 9, 2026

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On Election Day, Spencer Pratt made a final pitch to voters in a social media video: a crash course in the laws of supply and demand, paired with an attack on the city’s “G-Wagon Brigade”—his term for the affluent elite he accused of running Los Angeles into the ground.

Hours later, several Mercedes G-Wagons—alongside a steady procession of McLarens, Porsches, and Range Rovers—pulled up to the back entrance of Pratt’s favorite local Mexican restaurant, Don Antonio’s, for his election night watch party. The contradiction appeared lost on much of the party’s guest list, which included Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman, former LAPD chief Charlie Beck, Jenny McCarthy, Adam Carolla, and David Foster.

Pratt spent his whole campaign casting himself as a populist, fighting on behalf of ordinary Angelenos against a detached ruling class of wealthy Los Angeles elites. Yet many of the people financing, amplifying, and celebrating his candidacy were themselves out-of-towners or affluent Westside power players—the very people Pratt mocked as the “G-Wagon Brigade.” And here they were, gathered at Don Antonio’s for an exclusive election night party where dozens of ordinary Pratt supporters—and most members of the press—were turned away at the door.

“We’re here for change, fellas,” Billy Bush, the former Access Hollywood host, told reporters gathered outside the event. “Go Pratt,” added Malibu native Brody Jenner as he walked inside. Brandon Johns, who met Pratt during the pandemic over social media and paid for a “Pratt for Mayor” branded billboard near his hometown in the Atlanta suburbs, flew into Los Angeles just for the watch party. “People love Spencer in Georgia,” Johns said during an interview with Vanity Fair.

They all came to celebrate Pratt, who for a brief moment this spring transformed himself into one of the most disruptive forces in Los Angeles politics, assembling an unlikely coalition of wildfire victims, national conservatives, disaffected Westside homeowners, bro-culture podcast personalities, animal rights activists, January 6 participants, and—according to Pratt—gang members. He built the campaign almost entirely online, flooding social media with inflammatory AI-generated videos and an endless stream of clips depicting homelessness, street crime, and urban disorder. Pratt complained about “taxpayer-funded teeth for meth heads” and “free pussies for transgender migrants” while he blamed Mayor Karen Bass for letting his house burn down during the 2025 wildfires.

Pundits praised the candidate for communicating more authentically than traditional politicians and for largely keeping his message focused on two emotionally resonant issues: the city’s response to the 2025 wildfires and Los Angeles’s homelessness crisis.

But by Sunday evening, the former reality TV star’s latest attempt at reinvention—a long shot campaign for mayor of Los Angeles—had effectively collapsed. His early lead over councilmember Nithya Raman vanished as mail-in ballots reshaped the race. The Associated Press called the race for Raman and Bass on Monday night.

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The problem for Pratt was that he conquered the algorithm without building a citywide coalition of eligible voters IRL. He didn’t hire a campaign manager, and his ground game—door knockers, phone bankers, etc.—wasn’t robust enough to compete with Raman’s or Bass’s.

Precinct-level voting data revealed a far narrower base of support for the insurgent candidate than social media and the prediction markets suggested. Ultimately, Pratt received 25.8% of the vote (as of Monday night), roughly the same percentage of votes Trump got in the city of Los Angeles during the 2024 election. He performed strongest in wealthy and predominantly white neighborhoods on the Westside and in pockets of the Hollywood Hills—especially areas most directly impacted by the catastrophic 2025 wildfires.

Outside those enclaves, however, the campaign struggled to expand, with the election exposing stark racial and socioeconomic divides in a deeply segregated city. Wealthier homeowners on the Westside increasingly gravitated toward Pratt’s anti-Democratic establishment message, while many poorer and more racially diverse communities remained skeptical of his campaign—despite Pratt’s highly publicized trips to historically black neighborhoods in South Central and Baldwin Village.

That tension never fully disappeared because the contradictions at the center of Pratt’s campaign never fully disappeared either. As the primary approached, the campaign increasingly drifted away from the wildfire-and-homelessness message that initially made Pratt competitive. After trying to distance himself from the Make America Great Again movement, he spent part of the final week of the race in New York, appearing on Fox News, where he called for political opponents to be jailed and accused homeless people of raping dogs—lines of attack that were reminiscent of President Trump’s claims that Haitian migrants in Ohio were eating pets. And even though he framed himself as a populist, much of Pratt’s economic agenda—lower taxes, deregulation, and aggressive pro-business development—would overwhelmingly benefit wealthy property owners, investors, and business elites.

In the end, Raman’s coalition proved far more durable offline than Pratt’s did online.

However, the councilmember’s journey to the runoff was tumultuous. Raman was getting hit from every direction during the primary. Pratt tried to portray Raman—a member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America—as a limousine liberal and out-of-touch leftist ideologue. On the other side of the aisle, Raman’s ideological peers on the city council, including Eunisses Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado, and Hugo Soto-Martínez—all members of the Democratic Socialists of America—endorsed Mayor Bass.

Pratt took an early lead on Raman after the first vote totals were released on election night. But, as late-arriving ballots were counted, Raman consolidated support across many of the city’s younger, renter-heavy, racially diverse, and college-educated neighborhoods—revealing the enormous gap between internet momentum and actual electoral infrastructure.

What followed was hardly surprising. After months of distancing himself from the conspiratorial thinking that formerly aligned him with Alex Jones, Pratt began hinting at election integrity issues as his lead disappeared. Accusations of election fraud levied by prominent conservatives including President Donald Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis also began to roll in.

However, others refuted the claims. “The election fraud theories in LA make no sense for many reasons (obviously Karen Bass would prefer to face Pratt in a very blue city than another Democrat), but if you count votes this way, over weeks, when most of the world counts immediately, then you’re inviting suspicions,” wrote political commentator Glenn Greenwald on X.

Meanwhile, the prediction markets helped fuel more accusations.

For weeks leading up to Election Day, Polymarket and Kalshi showed Pratt with strong odds of advancing to the runoff despite limited public polling. The markets created a self-reinforcing cycle: Pratt’s internet popularity drove betting activity, which in turn generated headlines and the appearance of political momentum.

Once the race started slipping away, Pratt’s content machine also noticeably slowed. His Instagram stories—once a relentless stream of nearly 100 posts per day—dropped dramatically. He began blocking critics on X, including director Joe Russo and MS NOW reporter Jacob Soboroff. He also echoed claims circulating among conservative influencers that Democrats were manufacturing votes by somehow exploiting the city’s homeless population.

As of publishing, Pratt hadn’t issued any statements or appeared publicly since the race was called on Monday night. And Mayor Bass’s campaign has already turned its sights on Raman, echoing attacks used by Pratt during the primary. “A campaign against Nithya Raman, who allows encampments near schools and cuts the police force, is one Mayor Bass looks forward to winning,” said Douglas Herman, a Bass campaign strategist, in a statement released Monday night.

The lasting lesson of the Pratt campaign may be that social media can manufacture momentum and distort perceptions of viability. But while Pratt’s message clearly resonated with many voters who are hurting and feel unheard, elections still require broad coalitions that extend beyond the algorithmically engaged.

A week after the election, the “Spencer Pratt for Mayor” graffiti had vanished from the walls at Runyon Canyon in Raman’s council district. For months, the graffiti had been painted over, retagged—in the same unmistakable handwriting—and painted over again: a fitting metaphor for a provocateur whose career has survived repeated attempts to write him off.

Spencer Pratt Won the Internet. Here’s How He Lost Los Angeles

Spencer Pratt’s Mayoral Campaign Proves It Takes More Than Mastering the Algorithm to Get Elected

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