Hollywood Mocks Pratt — LA Voters Are Rallying Behind Him Anyway

Karen Bass is sweating — a reality TV star is polling right behind her in the Los Angeles mayor’s race, and Hollywood’s late-night establishment is panicking hard enough to prove the threat is real.

Story Snapshot

Spencer Pratt, former reality TV personality, is polling in second place in the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral primary, trailing incumbent Mayor Karen Bass by a razor-thin margin.
A Los Angeles Times poll shows Bass leading Councilmember Nithya Raman by just one percentage point, with Pratt close behind — making a runoff highly likely.
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel attacked Pratt on air, calling him a “screaming jerk on reality shows,” a move many observers say backfired by amplifying Pratt’s anti-establishment appeal.
Pratt has framed his campaign around Los Angeles’s homelessness crisis, wildfire response failures, and the city’s overall decline under Bass’s leadership.

A City in Crisis Looks for Answers

Los Angeles is a city that has tested the patience of even its most loyal residents. Under Mayor Karen Bass, the city has struggled with a worsening homelessness crisis, a devastating wildfire season, and a $14 billion annual budget that critics argue has delivered little relief to ordinary Angelenos. That frustration has opened the door wide for an unconventional candidate. Spencer Pratt, 42, best known for his time on the reality series “The Hills,” has stepped through that door and is making establishment Democrats deeply uncomfortable.

Pratt has described his campaign not as a political exercise but as a mission, and Los Angeles voters appear to be listening. A late-May Los Angeles Times poll showed Bass holding a one-point lead over City Councilmember Nithya Raman, with Pratt polling close behind in a three-way race that analysts say is almost certain to produce a runoff. No candidate is expected to clear the majority threshold needed to avoid one. Fox News reported that Bass herself appeared to liken Pratt to former President Donald Trump — a comparison that, in a city fed up with career politicians, may not land the way she intended.

Kimmel Attacks — and May Have Helped Pratt

Jimmy Kimmel used his late-night platform to mock Pratt’s candidacy, calling him a “screaming jerk on reality shows” and arguing that “mayor should not be your first job.” Kimmel pointed to the city’s $14 billion annual budget as evidence that Pratt lacks the qualifications to lead. He told Los Angeles voters they “better find somebody else to vote for.” The monologue also took shots at Pratt’s past business ventures, including selling healing crystals online. Kimmel does not live within the city limits of Los Angeles and cannot vote in the race.

The attack drew immediate blowback. Critics pointed out that Kimmel’s mockery did nothing to address the actual failures of Bass’s administration — homelessness, wildfire response, and fiscal mismanagement. Social media users noted the irony of a Hollywood entertainer, ineligible to vote in the election, lecturing Angelenos about who deserves to lead their city. Pratt responded publicly, and the exchange only increased his media footprint. Bill Maher, hardly a conservative, interviewed Pratt on his podcast “Club Random” the day before the primary — a conversation the Daily Beast described as something close to an endorsement.

Anti-Establishment Energy Fuels a Surprising Surge

Pratt’s rise fits a pattern seen in other cities where voters have lost faith in the political class. When incumbents are tied to visible failures — crime, homelessness, administrative dysfunction — low-trust electorates often gravitate toward outsiders who speak plainly about what has gone wrong. Pratt has centered his campaign on exactly those themes, addressing Los Angeles’s homelessness epidemic and the city’s widely criticized wildfire response in a sit-down interview with NBC4’s political reporter Conan Nolan.

Fundraising numbers have added credibility to what many initially dismissed as a novelty run. Fox News reported that Pratt stunned Bass with record-breaking fundraising for the mayoral race, a signal that donors — not just curious onlookers — are taking the campaign seriously. Prediction markets also reflect genuine uncertainty about the outcome. The question heading into any runoff is whether Pratt’s polling support and media momentum can convert into durable votes when the field narrows. What is already clear is that Los Angeles voters are sending a message: business as usual is no longer acceptable, and no amount of late-night ridicule from Hollywood insiders is going to silence them.