Los Angeles lost its best shot at real accountability when the mail-in ballots finished rolling in.
Spencer Pratt watched his lead evaporate over the course of a week, and now the city is headed for a November runoff between two Democrats who helped create the mess it is already in.
But Pratt just told Bass and Raman something that should have both of them wide awake at 3 a.m.
The Campaign Is Over. The Mission Is Not.
Bass and Raman emerged from a crowded all-party primary field that included Pratt, a registered Republican who ran an insurgent campaign focused on criticizing Bass for her response to the Los Angeles wildfires last year. On election night, Pratt actually led Raman for the second spot. A strong election night performance that suggested he’d finish in the top two and move on was eventually erased by a surge in mail-in votes over the next week.
With 99% of the votes counted, Bass came out on top with 34% of the vote, Raman in second with 29%, and Pratt just behind at 25.5%. A spread of less than four points knocked him out of the race. Whether you find that suspicious or not probably depends on how much faith you have left in California’s mail-in ballot system.
Pratt shared a video questioning whether people thought they could get rid of him “that easily,” after Bass and Raman were declared the winners. He continued to reveal that he had a recording of one of the candidates “doing and saying something” that would make them resign, adding that he was “saving it for the general election.”
“Hey, morons, I didn’t get in this for political power, I got in this to expose this corrupt machine, and nothing has changed. You enjoy your worthless meetings at City Hall,” Pratt stated.
What He Actually Said
The full quote deserves to be read slowly. “My goal hasn’t changed. I’ve been laser focused on stopping these commie animals, and I will stop them. If you think we uncovered a lot of fraud and evil in the campaign, just wait. We have some recordings of one of your exalted candidates doing and saying something that would make her resign in shame.” “I was saving it for the general election,” he added.
“Go ahead and pick your demon, certify your choice, and then you get to see it,” Pratt continued. “So, Karen, Nithya, ask yourself: is it possible that one of your employees may have a recording of you doing or saying something that would force you to resign in disgrace?”
And then he pointed toward the FBI. He said he wanted Bass and Raman “awake at night sweating and worried about 5:00 a.m. [men] in FBI blazers busting in the door, breaking open your office, because I assure you, they’re coming.”
“And now every problem that plagues Los Angeles because of these two corrupt communists is going to accelerate,” Pratt warned.
How He Got Here
None of this came out of nowhere. Pratt announced his run for mayor on the one-year anniversary of the start of the Palisades Fire, at a “They Let Us Burn!” protest in the Pacific Palisades near the remains of his home.
“On Jan. 7, 2025, [his wife] Heidi [Montag] and I lost our home. We lost every material possession we own. My parents lost their home too and, with it, decades of memories lost inside those walls,” Pratt told the crowd, calling it the “worst day of my life.”
He never pretended to be a polished politician. “Business as usual is a death sentence for Los Angeles, and I’m done waiting for someone to take real action. That’s why I am running for mayor,” Pratt said. “But let me be clear, this just isn’t a campaign — this is a mission, and we are going to expose the system. We are going into every dark corner of L.A. politics and disinfecting the city with our light.”
Pratt is a Republican in a heavily Democratic city who was endorsed by Steve Hilton, a Republican candidate for governor, and Richard Grenell, an ally of President Donald Trump. He pulled 25% of the vote in a city where Republicans barely register on the electoral map. That is not a small thing.
The Bigger Picture Nobody in the LA Press Wants to Say Out Loud
Los Angeles voters just chose between a mayor who was on vacation in Ghana when the Palisades burned and a Democratic Socialists of America city council member. The November runoff will be a one-on-one matchup between two Democrats. The city that gave the country Karen Bass gets to keep Karen Bass, or trade her in for someone further left. That is the choice.
Pratt spent months doing what no one else in the city’s political class was willing to do. In the last year, Pratt emerged as the face of a fire accountability movement, leveraging his millions of followers on social media to blast what he has called criminal negligence. He pulled U.S. Senator Rick Scott into the fight, pushed for a federal investigation, and refused to let Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom quietly bury the story under a pile of press releases.
And now he says he has a recording.
Nobody knows yet whether what Pratt is sitting on is genuinely explosive or whether this is a political bluff designed to keep pressure on two candidates who would very much like him to disappear. He has not released any evidence publicly, and the claims remain unverified. But the fact that he is directing the warning at both Bass and Raman — and pointing toward FBI involvement — suggests he believes what he has is real.
In a fiery video released after the latest Los Angeles County election tally put him firmly in third place, Pratt declared war on what he called a corruption machine that has taken over City Hall, funding non-government agencies, he says, who are “profiting off misery.”
Bass has already survived more than a year of scrutiny over the fire response. Raman has coasted through the primary on a left-wing base that does not particularly care about accountability, so long as the right slogans get repeated. Neither of them has had to answer real questions from anyone with actual reach — until now, arguably.
There is also the matter of Pratt’s campaign office. The office, located inside the Highlands Circle complex at 1515 Palisades Dr., was reported to have been set on fire. The Los Angeles Fire Department’s Arson Unit was notified, and the cause of the fire remains under investigation. Pratt told the press, “I want to be careful to not compromise an arson investigation, but this incident is very suspicious.” He added that he would wait for investigators to release details but called the timing “very suspect.”
Whether the arson investigation leads anywhere or quietly gets shelved the way other inconvenient Los Angeles stories tend to, the pattern Pratt is describing — a city government that covers up its failures, profits from misery, and punishes anyone who gets too close — is exactly what tens of thousands of Palisades fire victims have been saying for a year and a half.
The recording, if it exists and is as damaging as Pratt claims, drops after the November runoff is certified. Bass and Raman now have five months to wonder which one of their employees may have handed Spencer Pratt the thing that ends one of their careers.
Los Angeles made its choice. Now it gets to live with it.
Sources: Breitbart News, Fox News, The Wrap, LA Magazine, PJ Media, NBC News, CBS News