Los Angeles has been a punchline for years — crime up, homelessness everywhere, and a mayor who flew to Ghana while the Palisades burned.
Now the guy who used to be famous for stirring up drama on a reality TV show might actually be the one to clean it up.
And CNN’s own data analyst just dropped numbers on Spencer Pratt’s mayoral campaign that nobody in the political establishment saw coming.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten appeared on CNN News Central and delivered a verdict that made many people do a double-take.
“It’s up like a rocket,” Enten said of Pratt’s chances. “Look, chances are he still won’t be the next mayor of Los Angeles, but there’s a pretty decent chance of it. It’s now up over a quarter of a 27% chance.”
Those who dismiss Pratt’s chances, Enten said, have “got another thing coming because he’s got a realistic shot of winning this thing.”
A 27% shot isn’t a guarantee. But it’s not nothing, either. For a guy who most of the political class laughed off the moment he announced, that number represents something real shifting on the ground in Los Angeles.
How a Reality Star Got Here
Pratt, who first rose to fame on the reality show The Hills, is running as a Republican on a platform of ending homelessness and crime in LA.
Pratt has blamed Bass — who had broken a pledge not to travel overseas as mayor and was in Ghana at the time the fire broke out — for his home’s destruction. His own house burned in the Palisades Fire, and he didn’t go quiet about it.
“She should have resigned on January 7, when she was in Ghana and everything was burning,” Pratt said in an interview on the “Good Guys” podcast last month. “She decided to continue on this quest of destroying Los Angeles. And I personally would like my children to be able to grow up in an L.A. that I grew up in — a beautiful L.A.; an L.A. that had hopes and dreams.”
His campaign ads, including a jingle to the tune of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, have been viral sensations. That’s not an accident. Pratt understands the current media environment in a way most career politicians still haven’t figured out.
California Republican strategist Matt Shupe argued that Pratt’s campaign represents a “real sort of lightning in a bottle opportunity” in a city long controlled by Democrats.
Trump Noticed
Pratt has also gotten the attention of President Donald Trump, who complimented the candidate as “doing well,” while praising him as “a big MAGA person.”
Trump’s instincts on these things tend to be worth paying attention to. He spotted something in the political winds before the consultants did in 2016, and he seems to see something in Pratt that the Los Angeles establishment would rather pretend isn’t there.
“I’d like to see him do well. He’s a character,” President Trump said. “I heard he’s a big MAGA person. He’s doing well.” Pratt gained some more political momentum thanks to high-profile donations.
Fox 11 Los Angeles reported that Pratt raised more than $538,000 in campaign contributions, compared to Bass, who brought in around $497,000. Some of Pratt’s most notable donors include Los Angeles Lakers minority owner Jeanie Buss, Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, Tinder founder Sean Rad, and Universal Music CEO Lucian Grainge.
Out-raising an incumbent mayor in one of the most Democrat-dominated cities in America is not something you do by accident. Money follows momentum, and the momentum is clearly moving.
The Race Itself
The 2026 Los Angeles mayoral election will be held on June 2, 2026. If no candidate receives a majority of the vote, a runoff election will be held on November 3, 2026.
Emerson College polling from May 2026 put Bass at 30 percent, Pratt at 22 percent and Raman at 19 percent, with undecided voters dropping sharply.
Pratt has climbed into second place through heightened media visibility and endorsements, narrowing the gap for a potential runoff spot. Getting into a one-on-one runoff against Bass in November is the ball game. If Pratt makes it there, all bets are off.
Pratt’s odds of making it through the June 2 primary look far more promising. Traders price the chances of the former reality star facing off against Karen Bass in November at 79%.
Bass, for her part, tried to wave the whole thing off. “I think oftentimes we look for somebody superhuman to save us,” Bass said in an interview with CNN’s Elex Michaelson. “The reality is it never happens.” That’s a pretty thin response from an incumbent whose city has been on fire — literally and figuratively — on her watch.
What It Means for a City That’s Had Enough
Los Angeles has been run by the same Democrat machine for decades. The results are visible to anyone who walks through downtown, drives the freeways, or used to own a home in Pacific Palisades.
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 comparisons to Trump are obvious and the political class makes them nervously. 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. And yet Trump won twice.
But Pratt faces real math. “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,” one strategist noted. “The fact that Spencer is still a registered Republican will be reasons one, two and three for Democrats to reject him.”
That’s a fair point. Los Angeles is not a purple city. Getting to a runoff is one thing. Winning a head-to-head in November against any Democrat in a city that votes the way LA votes is a different mountain entirely.
Still, nobody thought a reality TV star from New York with no political experience was going to win the White House, either. The political class keeps drawing lines it’s sure outsiders can’t cross. And it keeps being wrong.
The primary is June 2. Watch it closely.
Sources: Mediaite, CNN Politics, Kalshi, Polymarket, Yahoo Sports/Newsweek, Fox 11 Los Angeles, Los Angeles Times