From reality star to potential mayor of Los Angeles: Spencer Pratt lost his home in the Palisades Fire. Now that loss, and the city’s response, have driven the former star of the MTV reality show “The Hills” to run for mayor. He has quickly become a top candidate.
Scripps News spoke with Maxwell Adler, a senior staff writer at Vanity Fair who just published an exclusive interview with Pratt. We asked: how seriously are Angelenos taking Pratt’s candidacy?
“When Spencer first entered the race, I don’t think even he himself was taking his candidacy particularly seriously. And the people of Los Angeles were taking notice. But no one was talking about him as a serious contender,” Adler said.
“I’d say the biggest turning point was a debate last month. It was the debate between him, Councilmember Nithya Raman and the sitting mayor Karen Bass, and Spencer Pratt performed pretty well. He came out. He sounded articulate and he kept his attacks very focused. His campaign thus far has pretty much been entirely focused on the city’s failed response to the homelessness crises and the response to the fires that devastated Pratt’s hometown of the Pacific Palisades in 2025.”
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Pratt is “trying to turn this into a referendum on the current Democratic leadership right now. He’s been rather successful in doing that thus far,” Adler said. “It still remains to be seen, though, if he’ll be able to channel enough of that anger to upset Mayor Bass, who is still the odds-on favorite in the betting markets right now. But a lot of people in the city are very angry at the current administration.”
Watch Adler’s full interview in the video above.