By Eric Bradner, CNN
(CNN) — Spencer Pratt might be a candidate uniquely suited for the moment: An elder millennial with everywhere-all-the-time social media instincts, bluntly spelling out Los Angeles’ challenges with homelessness, crime and mismanagement and laying blame at the feet of its entrenched Democratic establishment.
The 42-year-old former reality television star’s willingness to be raw and provocative, on the bet that authenticity is the coin of today’s political realm, helps explain the growing buzz — particularly among Republicans who see in Pratt traits similar to those that catapulted Donald Trump into the White House twice — around his run against unpopular Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass ahead of the nominally nonpartisan June 2 primary.
But it also might severely limit the ability of Pratt, a registered Republican, to win a general election once voters narrow the field to two candidates. And it explains why 72-year-old Bass and her allies are trying to set up a head-to-head race in November against Pratt, rather than facing a more nuanced campaign against her chief progressive rival, 44-year-old city councilwoman Nithya Raman.
“Being louder doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s actual support for him in the city of L.A.,” said Democratic strategist Michael Trujillo.
Pratt’s emergence has jolted a race that long looked much more likely to pit Bass against a challenger from her left. But with ballots already mailed to voters and Pratt drawing the nation’s eyes to Los Angeles, the question voters will answer is whether the strains of dissatisfaction he is tapping into can overcome the reality of the city’s deep-blue bent.
“For as creative and as imaginative and as fun as Spencer Pratt’s campaign is, they run into a real math equation come June 3, if they make the runoff,” Trujillo said. “The fact that Spencer is still a registered Republican will be reasons one, two and three for Democrats to reject him.”
The Trump-Pratt parallels
Comparisons of Pratt and Trump are natural: Former reality television stars with scant political experience and penchants for sucking up most of the oxygen in an election. Plain-spoken, often combative language that can be jarring on the debate stage. Claims of simple and sweeping solutions to decades-old, intractable problems. Strategists analyzing polling and voter registration data and sensing a hard cap on their support — ceilings that Trump repeatedly broke through, and that Pratt is now attempting to shatter.
However, Trump lost the county of Los Angeles, which encompasses the city, by 49 percentage points in 2016, 44 points in 2020 and 33 points in 2024 — and the city is bluer than the county. Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in the city of Los Angeles by about a four-to-one margin. Billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso, an independent-turned-Democrat, tried to challenge Bass from the center in the 2022 mayoral election, and lost that race by 10 points.
Pratt, the villain of “The Hills,” will have to appeal much more broadly for voters to give him the opportunity he wants to become Los Angeles’ hero.
And he’ll have to do so against the backdrop of a polarized national electorate, with Democrats seemingly motivated to vote in races up and down the ballot as a counter to Trump.
The sense of momentum behind his campaign is driven in part by national buzz — seen most vividly in the reaction to an AI-generated video created by filmmaker Charles Curran portraying Pratt as Batman.
In the video, P