Los Angeles is a city that has been burning — literally — and the politicians running it have been missing in action.
Now, a reality TV star who lost everything in the Palisades Fire is making a serious run at City Hall.
And what Spencer Pratt said about Jesus left a CNN anchor scrambling for words.
The Answer Nobody Saw Coming
In an interview published Wednesday, CNN’s Elex Michaelson asked Pratt, “Who is your political role model?” Pratt, a Republican who launched his campaign for mayor in January to unseat Democrat Karen Bass, responded, “Jesus Christ.”
Michaelson smiled. Then he pivoted and asked if there were any modern politicians Pratt looked up to.
Pratt’s full answer on Jesus was, “He was a politician, you know, he had to go in and speak.” He then went on to say, “I am not a politician, I don’t want to be a politician, I want to be a fighter for the people.”
The answer recalled former President George W. Bush locking up the Evangelical vote in the 2000 Presidential primary by stating on a debate stage that Jesus was his favorite philosopher.
Asked by Michaelson what one word separated him from his competitors, Pratt responded, “Truth.”
Say what you want about the man — and plenty of people have — but that’s not a rehearsed, focus-grouped answer. That’s somebody who actually means what he says.
From Reality TV to the Rubble of the Palisades
Pratt launched his mayoral bid on January 7 — the one-year anniversary of the Palisades Fire that destroyed his home and thousands of others.
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.
That’s not a minor political grievance. The city was on fire, and the mayor was on another continent.
Bass faced heavy criticism during the fire for being absent, including taking a trip to Ghana as a historic windstorm swept the area ahead of the blaze, for not deploying proper pre-fire resources, and enacting around $17.6 million in cuts to the city’s fire department ahead of the tragedy.
In one of his campaign ads, Pratt stands in front of a mobile home and says, “This is where I live.” “They let my home burn down,” he continued. “I know what the consequences of failed leadership are. That’s why I’m running for mayor, for my sons and the rest of these Angelenos that want to stop these corrupt politicians from destroying our city.”
And Donald Trump noticed.
While speaking with reporters on Wednesday, President Donald Trump wished Pratt well in his race against Bass. “Oh, I’d like to see him do well. He’s a character,” Trump said.
The Obama Comparison Nobody Expected Either
The Jesus answer got all the headlines, but Pratt dropped another curveball in the same interview.
Pratt said, “I am most similar to Obama. But as the lady on *The View* said, I don’t have a law degree. So I’m going to work on that online before November. I probably can get one. I’ll do the baby bar.”
Speaking about the interview with Pratt afterwards, Michaelson said that Pratt meant he was the most similar to former President Barack Obama because “they are both community advocates.”
Whether that comparison lands or not, the point is that Pratt refuses to play by the standard rules. He’s not reading from a teleprompter. He’s not triangulating. He’s saying whatever he actually thinks, and in a city suffocated by political correctness and career politicians, that alone makes him stand out.
A City Ready to Break From the Past
Los Angeles has not had a Republican mayor since Richard Riordan, who served from 1993 to 2001. That’s a quarter century of one-party rule — and the results are visible in the charred hillsides and the tent cities lining the sidewalks.
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.
Bass, for her part, tried to frame Pratt’s anger as a political liability.
“I think that he is tapping into a general sense of anger that people have, not just in Los Angeles, but in many other places around our country,” Bass told MS NOW.
But calling voter anger a problem doesn’t make it go away. It’s the kind of tone-deaf response that explains why Bass is in trouble to begin with.
“For a longtime politician, I am godsmacked by Karen Bass’ absolute tone deafness in attacking a survivor of the Palisades Fire in this way,” Roxanne Hoge, Chairwoman of the L.A. Republican Party, told Fox News Digital.
What the Race Looks Like Now
The primary for the mayoral race is June 2. If, as expected, no candidate in the crowded contest surpasses 50 percent of the vote, the top two finishers will advance to the general election in November.
Emerson College polling from May 2026 put Bass at 30 percent and Pratt at 22 percent. That’s a real race. Not a foregone conclusion.
The political establishment in Los Angeles has run that city into the ground for decades. The homeless population exploded. The fire department got gutted. The mayor flew overseas while homes burned. And now they want voters to trust them one more time.
Spencer Pratt is an unlikely candidate — nobody is pretending otherwise. But the people of Los Angeles have tried the polished, credentialed, career-politician route for 25 years and ended up with ash and tent cities. Maybe “fighter for the people” with Jesus Christ as a role model is exactly the kind of answer a broken city needs to hear right now.
California Republican strategist Matt Shupe called Pratt’s campaign a “real sort of lightning in a bottle opportunity” in a city long controlled by Democrats.
The June 2 primary will tell us whether Los Angeles is ready to take a chance on something different — or whether they’ll hand Karen Bass another term and keep wondering why nothing ever changes.
Sources: Fox News, CNN, Washington Examiner, The Hill, Newsweek, Governing, Washington Times, TMZ