Spencer Pratt says the abuse that followed him online for years, along with the glare of reality TV, is part of what prepared him for a run for mayor of Los Angeles. The former reality star said the campaign’s criticism and threats feel familiar, and that he is not measuring himself by what happens on the internet.
Pratt, 42, announced earlier this year that he was entering the race after he and his family lost their home in last year’s wildfires. He said the moment he told thousands of fire victims about the bid changed how people saw him, because the crowd cheered and he felt his community had already watched him fight for them for months.
That personal pitch matters because Pratt is no longer speaking as a nostalgia act from the early days of reality television. He rose to fame in the 2000s on The Hills with Heidi Montag, whom he married in 2008, and he now says that public life taught him how to absorb hostility without letting it define the work in front of him.
Pratt said the ability to stay steady under pressure comes from experience, not celebrity. He said his wife and two children are proof that he would not trade the path that brought him here, even if it began with fame that many people treated as a punchline.
He also framed his bid as something broader than party politics, saying he is running as a centrist and not as either major party. That matters because his campaign has drawn attention from people across the country, including President Donald Trump, even though Los Angeles mayoral races are nonpartisan and no candidate’s party appears on the ballot.
Pratt said what keeps him going is not viral attention but the reaction he gets in person around Los Angeles. He said those conversations, more than his online profile, make him believe there is real support building behind the campaign as he emerges in the polling against Mayor Karen Bass and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman.
The unanswered question is how far that support can carry him in a city where celebrity alone rarely survives contact with a real campaign. Pratt says he has been fighting for his community for months; the race now will show whether voters see that as sincerity, or as one more reality-TV turn.
