Will online attention translate to real-life votes for Spencer Pratt in Los Angeles?
The now-viral AI-generated video opens with the iconic Hollywood sign on fire and shows Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass made up to look like the Joker. California Governor Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris feast with the elites while a Batman-like figure moves through the city streets to battle armed agents.
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The video, which now has more than 5 million views on
Republicans are encouraging it, highlighting videos they say are generating excitement on the ground in a city where their party doesn’t often gain ground in local or state elections.
Pratt even appears to have caught the attention of President Donald Trump, who recently told reporters, “I’d like to see him succeed. He’s a character.”
Some Democrats, meanwhile, dismiss Pratt’s virality on the Internet, saying the majority of users who cheer for him online don’t live in Los Angeles and won’t have a say in the upcoming mayoral primary.
What they can’t ignore, however, is that Bass is in political trouble, facing challenges from the left and right in the upcoming multi-party primary for mayor. And in recent polls, Pratt has gained ground, increasing the likelihood that he and Bass, a Democrat running for a second term, could move from the June 2 primary to a head-to-head election in November.
Pratt’s fame — or infamy, according to “The Hills” viewers — reached its peak in the mid-2000s, when he appeared on the unscripted MTV show alongside his wife, Heidi Montag. But last year, after Pratt and Montag’s Pacific Palisades home burned in the Los Angeles fires along with thousands of others, the former reality TV villain gained popularity online, urging his social media followers to stream Montag’s 2010 album, “Superficial” to help the couple raise money to rebuild their lives.
Fueled by ordinary online followers and celebrities like Bad Bunny listening to Montag’s music, his album climbed the charts. Meanwhile, Pratt quickly became the face of opposition to Bass and Newsom, whom he criticized for not doing enough to prevent or fight the fires.
In January, Pratt officially launched his campaign for mayor, telling voters: “This is simply not a campaign, it’s a mission, and we’re going to expose the system. We’re going into every dark corner of Los Angeles politics and disinfecting the city with our light.”
Pratt’s campaign has denied being behind the AI-generated Batman and Joker video, but the reality star has continued to place the wildfires and Bass’s leadership at the center of his campaign, gaining support through his own viral videos, including one he posted to Instagram last week in which he raps a parody of the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” theme song.
“In West Los Angeles, in Palisades, in the backyard, that’s where I spent most of my days… when a few politicians that were up to no good started stirring up trouble in my neighborhood,” Pratt rapped in the video, calling himself the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” He mocked the criticism after TMZ reported earlier this month that Pratt and Montag were living at the Bel-Air Hotel, rather than the Airstream trailer he claimed to live in in previous campaign videos.
Pratt’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story, but other Los Angeles Republicans said Pratt’s direct communication with voters and his viral videos are one of the reasons he has gained so much momentum in the race in recent months.
“Seeing, not only online, but seeing people in real life getting excited about this is very unusual,” Los Angeles Republican Party Chairwoman Roxanne Hoge told NBC News, saying voters “often don’t know who’s running for mayor, or even who the mayor is.”
“I always warn people that, you know, likes and clicks and followers are not votes, but there is a change in the mood,” Hoge said. “There is a dynamic.”
Hoge added that Democrats have long dominated Los Angeles politics and Pratt is the first candidate to seriously challenge the “status quo” in years.
“Here’s why people in Los Angeles are really excited: because he’s diagnosing the problem. He’s saying out loud, ‘The emperor has no clothes, and I can see it, I can see it. Can you all see it?’ And then he prescribes solutions to that problem,” she said.
A Los Angeles Times poll released last week showed that 30 percent of voters support Bass, 22 percent of voters support Pratt and 20 percent of voters support City Council member Nithya Raman, a former Bass ally and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Sixteen percent of voters were still undecided in the poll.
If no candidate in the June 2 primary receives 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getters will advance to a November 3 runoff.
Even though support for Pratt has grown in recent weeks, he and Raman are still fighting for second place in the current primary, with mail-in voting already underway. Both campaigns are seeking to capitalize on discontent over Bass, who faced widespread criticism for his handling of the Palisades fires last year.
More than half of Los Angeles voters — 56 percent — had an unfavorable opinion of the mayor in a Los Angeles Times poll in March.
“The majority of voters disapprove of the job Mayor Bass is doing. The question is whether they want a progressive alternative or a Republican MAGA alternative,” a source close to Raman’s campaign told NBC News of the differences between Raman and Pratt.
Raman officially launched his campaign in March, seeking to capitalize on this momentum as a left-wing Bass alternative. But a lukewarm debate in May, compared to a fiery appearance by Pratt, dampened his momentum and fueled his own.
A spokesman for Bass’s campaign acknowledged the recent attention to the race because of Pratt’s online videos, but said the campaign has strong confidence she will come in first in the primary.
“We have to take every contender seriously,” the person said, adding that Bass supporters remember the shock of Trump’s 2016 presidential victory. “Anything can happen.”
