Spencer Pratt is 'winning the internet,' but can he become mayor of Los Angeles?

Spencer Pratt is 'winning the internet,' but can he become mayor of Los Angeles? toggle caption Andy Kropa/AP/Invision To Spencer Pratt and his supporters, becoming mayor of Los Angeles first means winning the internet. Pratt has amplified outlandish artificial intelligence videos, including one depicting lightsaber duels between him and the city's current mayor, Karen Bass and another where he's portrayed as Batman descending on a burning Los Angeles to save the day; his campaign has tapped an army of freelance "clippers" to edit short social media snippets of him bashing the city's leaders; and he talks about nonexistent "super meth" plaguing the city's streets and pushed false narratives about California lawmakers' response to the Palisades Fire. toggle caption Charlie Curran via Twitter It's perhaps no surprise that the 42-year-old former villain of the reality television show "The Hills" knows how to work the attention economy, but he's doing so by borrowing the combative and mocking style of politics popular in fringe online forums and celebrated by allies of President Trump. Sponsor Message "He's probably the most Trumpian candidate we've ever seen in terms of house style," said Steve Bannon, Trump's former top adviser. "Trump's superpower was bringing in people into politics who hate politics, and that's what he's doing online right now." Pratt's internet antics are up against long odds. On June 2, Angelenos will go to the polls for the city's "jungle primary," a nonpartisan contest where Pratt, a Republican, will face off against Democratic incumbent Bass and progressive council member Nithya Raman. If any candidate surpasses 50% of the vote, that person becomes mayor. If nobody does, the top two vote getters compete in a November runoff. Polls show Pratt and Raman neck and neck, with Bass commanding a comfortable lead. Yet Pratt is harnessing the web to shake things up. He has leapt into the usually more mundane world of municipal politics with brash and extreme rhetoric, taking to TikTok, with direct-to-camera videos condemning Bass' response to the devastating Pacific Palisades wildfires that claimed his family's home. He describes Bass as "the mayor who let the town burn down." Pratt has also blamed city leaders with enabling the deterioration of city residents' quality of life, or, as he puts it on TikTok, "a city battered by fires, homelessness and crime," a framing that would sound familiar to anyone watching right-wing influencers and streamers. Sponsor Message Pratt says, without evidence, that "socialists in LA city government are stealing your money." He denigrates the city's homeless as fentanyl-addled "zombies." And he has promised to clear out encampments by mass-arresting people living on the streets. He's accused Bass and Raman of "running a grift with the Homeless Industrial Complex," a vague and unsubstantiated claim aimed at whipping up his fans online, according to Dan Cassino, a professor of government at Fairleigh Dickinson University who studies masculinity and politics. "These are the sorts of things that play very well in red-pilled forums where there's this idea that everyone is in control of their lives and 'we need to embrace hard truths out there that they won't teach you in school,'" he said. Pratt's endorsement from podcaster Joe Rogan, Cassino said, is proof of Pratt's credibility in the manosphere, the bro-friendly world of male influencers who wage war against polite society. "Focusing on this audience is a way to target young men," Cassino said. "Just as Trump did in 2024, and now we see Spencer Pratt doing the same thing." LA Councilmember: 'winning the internet' doesn't equal an election win Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Bonin has been watching Pratt's campaign morph from unserious long-shot to top three contender. Pratt had a megaphone of millions of social media followers before he ran for public office. That has helped supercharge the spread of the AI slop videos his fans have made. So has Elon Musk's repeated re-sharing and replies to Pratt's content on X, the platform the tech mogul owns, to his 240 million followers. When Pratt wants his incendiary campaign messages and AI content to spread even farther, conservative influencers like Laura Loomer, Ben Shapiro and Benny Johnson are at the ready, commenting and reposting to juice Pratt's reach. Sponsor Message "Winning the internet is not the same thing as winning the election, but it can help," said Bonin, who now directs the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles. toggle caption TikTok He points to how the kinetic digital campaign of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani inundated Instagram Reels and TikTok with videos showing how natural and conversant he was with the format. More close to home, Los Angeles Controller Kenneth Mejia won his 2022 election using his two corgis on billboards and in social media videos as a way of appealing to those terminally online. The difference wi