The star of a long-running reality show is looking poised for a fresh episode in the Los Angeles mayoral race.
With about half the votes counted, The Hills star-turned-political gadfly Spencer Pratt sat comfortably in second place with 30% of the vote, ahead of his third-place rival, progressive City Council member Nithya Raman, by nine points. If the totals were to hold — and a lot of ballots still need to be counted — it would set up a made-for-vintage-MTV showdown between Pratt and incumbent Karen Bass, who sits in first place with 37%.
The general election battle between the two would be one of the fiercest and most colorful the city has seen in decades. Pratt has repeatedly gone after Bass in the primary campaign, reposting videos of her depicted as The Joker and deriding her response to the wildfires, homelessness and the city’s housing crisis. After previously ignoring hm, Bass has recently gone after Pratt too, calling him a “TV reality star villain.” Pratt has received the seal of approval of another reality star-turned-politician, Donald Trump, though rebuffed the endorsement.
The primary race is far from over, however. Later ballots tend to skew Democratic, and if Raman were even within striking distance by midnight Tuesday she could pull past Pratt when all is said and done.
If Raman were to go down it would be a rebuff for progressives in the city, though it would also stir up some Monday-morning quarterbacking about the decision of Rae Huang, a Democratic Socialist of America candidate, to stay in the race and siphon votes from Raman, giving Pratt the two-spot. It is all but impossible for Bass to surge past 50%, which she would need to avoid a runoff.
Despite Pratt’s entertainment bona fides, it was Bass who sought to position herself as the candidate of Hollywood in her speech to supporters Tuesday night. She called L.A. “the creative capital of the world’ and decried an “industry that was leaving but we are bringing it back.”
Pratt, for his part, has kept Hollywood or at least the media at bay — he appeared to ban them from covering his election-night party at Don Antonio’s in Sawtelle, according to two people on the ground, in contravention of longstanding election-night practice but in keeping with his anti-elites theme.
In the California governor’s race, another critic of Democratic incumbents has turned out a strong showing. Former Fox News host Steve Hilton — like Pratt a TV figure who has never run for elected office — had inched into the lead with about half the ballots counted, just one point ahead of Democrat Xavier Becerra and a full seven points ahead of progressive Democrat Tom Steyer.
Should results hold, it would set up a general election between the moderate Democrat and former California AG Becerra, an establishment candidate, and the British Hilton, the political upstart who also has Trump’s endorsement.
Hilton has run a race lambasting incumbent Democrats, particularly Governor Gavin Newsom, and campaigned on a traditional conservative platform of lower taxes and fewer regulations. He has said he would raise the film tax credit ceiling to as high as 60%. In his speech to supporters, Hilton nodded to his England-born status. “I know some of you who are watching thinking ‘who is this guy with a funny accent thinking he can be governor,’” then segueing into a reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger and a conversation he had with him about becoming governor. “Change is coming,” he chanted at his rally.
Steyer had staked out a very different and more activist government position, arguing for more climate regulations, more worker protections and novel proposals such as the “token tax,” which would charge people for AI usage and put the money in a pot for displaced workers. Some polls had put the billionaire entrepreneur in second place in the days leading up to the race.
But the candidate — who had spent more than $200 million of his own money on the campaign, the most of any candidate this primary season nationwide — seems to be sputtering with voters in the early going, another rebuff of progressives in California.
Becerra continued to ride a late-season wave that has seen him go from single digits all the way to the top of the heap in gis bid to becomes the state’s first Latino governor.
More to come…
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