Spencer Pratt spoke into his smartphone camera and blamed Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for the environmental catastrophe of the Palisades fire and the homeless crisis that triggered typhus. In a 30-second clip released in April, he took his campaign message straight to the kind of feed that now helps decide races in Los Angeles, and the spot has since drawn more than 13 million views.
Pratt’s ad is part confession, part attack and part performance. One version shows him outside Nithya Raman’s home in Silver Lake, the mayor’s city-owned mansion in Hancock Park and the Pacific Palisades lot where his home burned in the 2025 fire. He did it without buying television time on Los Angeles’s top local stations, just as Raman did not. Instead, both leaned into the fast, cheap, highly shareable world of social video, where a tiny microphone and a phone camera can matter as much as a polished commercial.
Bass has answered with a different kind of machine. She has raised nearly $4 million, including public matching funds, and is targeting voters in ads running on Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, the NBA semifinals and other telecasts. Pratt, by contrast, has built a national following with viral ads produced by his own camp and outside supporters, turning celebrity into a political weapon and making a local race feel wider than Los Angeles itself.
The tactic is not entirely new, but the volume is. Nithya Raman used an influencer-style video with a tiny microphone to explain how she would bring back Hollywood, fix streetlights and oppose rich contracts for the city’s police union. Sara Sadhwani called it “the new era of campaigning,” adding that social media has changed the game because voters no longer just look for a candidate they could have a beer with; now they respond to how that candidate connects online. In that world, the old rulebook built around expensive television buys has less pull than the quick hit of a clip that can spread beyond one city in minutes.
That reach can cut both ways. Bill Carrick noted that a viewer far outside California could still be watching the message, saying, “My college roommate could be watching in South Carolina,” even if that person cannot cast a ballot in the June 2 primary election. The clip may elevate Pratt’s profile far beyond the electorate, but it also turns attention into a kind of currency in a contest where name recognition can be as useful as a party endorsement or a debate moment.
There is also a tension in Pratt’s approach. He is using the same pop-culture machinery that made him a national figure, including an unpaid 57-second appearance on The Masked Singer in February when Heidi Montag was revealed as Snowcone. Mike Trujillo said that is part of the point: it is “second nature” for Pratt, who is leaning into things he already knows a little better. That ease makes the message feel less like an ad and more like a viral event, even as it is aimed at a deeply local race.
Los Angeles politics used to be dominated by television ads, especially in mayoral contests where money could drown out almost anything else. Rick Caruso spent more than $100 million in his failed 2022 bid to beat Bass, a scale of spending that reshaped expectations for everyone who followed. Bass, however, is not facing another Caruso-style spender this year. Alex Stack said, “Caruso outspent us 11 to 1 and we still won,” before adding, “This time it’s a bigger field. … We’re ru” as the race moves into a different kind of fight.
That different fight is why the Pratt video matters now. Bass is spending to blanket screens. Raman is trying to look nimble and direct. Pratt is selling a political story through spectacle, grievance and familiarity, and the numbers show that the audience is there. The unanswered question is not whether the clip was seen. It was. The question is whether a viral star can help decide a mayor’s race in a city where fame, money and attention have all learned to compete on the same screen.
