The Spencer Pratt Campaign Won't Go Away

I keep wanting to dismiss the Spencer Pratt campaign, but it's been attracting serious attention from as far away as Australia, as the clip embedded above shows. Yesterday, Trump gave him a quasi-endorsement:

Speaking to reporters Wednesday before boarding Air Force One, the president of the United States and former host of “The Apprentice” declared that Spencer Pratt – the villain of MTV’s “The Hills” and current candidate for mayor of America’s second-largest city – is “a big MAGA person” whom he’d “like to see do well.”

Just like that, Pratt’s insurgent meme-filled campaign for Los Angeles mayor, which is giving incumbent Mayor Karen Bass a run for her money in California’s sprawling deep-blue metropolis, took yet another unpredictable turn.

Pratt, a 42-year-old reality TV star who launched his candidacy in January after losing his Pacific Palisades home in the devastating 2025 wildfires, is running as an independent, building his campaign around voter fury at incumbent Bass and her handling of the disaster’s aftermath. He has worked carefully to cast himself as a nonpartisan outsider – “I represent all of Los Angeles,” he has said – even as MAGA-aligned personalities have applauded his combative social-media driven rise.

The same link at Real Clear Politics -- the site that touts its reputation by averaging garbage-in-garbage-out polling to come up with meaningless numbers -- concludes that Trump's endorsement is "a kiss of death":

The city Pratt is running to lead is not fertile ground for Trump’s blessing. Los Angeles County broke for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election by 65% to 32%. The city has not elected a Republican mayor in nearly three decades. And only 18% of registered city voters are Republicans.

Against that backdrop, veteran Democratic strategists were quick to render their verdict.

“A Trump endorsement only helps with Republicans,” Democratic consultant Steve Maviglio told RealClearPolitics. “In Los Angeles, it’s a kiss of death. Pratt might get protest votes in June from Democrats. But when push comes to shove, Los Angeles, with its heavily Latino and black populations and deep blue Democratic base, isn’t going to elect a mayor who is embraced by Trump.”

“And you can be sure that Mayor Bass will do everything she can to remind voters that they are MAGA twins,” he added.

Bass’ campaign didn’t wait long to make exactly that point. Within hours of Trump’s comments, a campaign Bass went on offense.

“No surprises here — both Trump and Pratt want ICE to invade our city and kidnap our neighbors,” she tweeted.

The Pratt campaign was already anticipating this line of attack:

Best ad....so far.

I'm not MAGA or anything..... https://t.co/w5HQtdvXIQ

— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) May 20, 2026

The odd thing is that the Real Clear Politics story at the link above quotes only Democrat strategists. Another story at the LA Times quotes Republicans:

“He’s an outsider candidate. He’s a celebrity candidate. He’s very clever, very strategic, and very skilled at social media,” said Republican strategist Kevin Spillane. “There aren’t many candidates that I’ve seen that are that skilled in a long time.”

Pratt regularly refers to Mayor Karen Bass, now seeking a second term, as trash, swapping her last name out for basura, Spanish for garbage. He has described supporters of Bass as “Bassholes” and backers of another mayoral contender, Councilmember Nithya Raman, as “Ramaniacs.”

. . . “He’s being brash, confrontational, sensational and operating beyond political norms — all things that Trump has done and continues to do,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant.

“That’s why I think there’s potential for him to unlock a constituency that wasn’t going to vote for a Rick Caruso,” he said, referring to the developer who lost to Bass in 2022.

(By the way, the Bass-Bassura pun went completely over my head in this post two weeks ago.) But are the Democrat strategists who say Trump's almost-endorsement is "a kiss of death" missing something?

Normally U.S. presidents approaching the midway point of their second term are beginning to experience the effects of declining political capital as lame ducks. But not Donald Trump, who continues to wield the power of election endorsements with unparalleled success.

America’s 47th president kept his impressive 2026 primary winning streak rolling Tuesday night, with more than three dozen Republicans winning outright or advancing to a runoff in states like Georgia, Alabama, Pennsylvania and Kentucky.

But the night’s biggest prize for Trump was the ousting of one-time ally Rep. Thomas Massie, who was defeated by Trump-backed rival Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL and Kentucky farmer, in one of the most expensive congressional races in American history.

The one certain thing about Pratt at the moment is that he's getting a great deal of attention. This has got to count for something, if not in the LA mayoral election, at least in his future prospects for whatever. He's getting all this attention for a reason.