Spencer Pratt’s near-perfect campaign in LA mayoral race is still doomed to fail … unless this one thing saves him

According to many critics, former reality TV star and registered Republican Spencer Pratt spanked incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and democratic socialist City Councilmember Nithya Raman in the Los Angeles mayoral debate on Wednesday night, with Fox News rating Pratt’s performance a “10/10 no notes.”

But even though Pratt delivered crisp answers, brought charismatic energy, exceeded expectations as a first-time debate performer, and has even outraised both Bass and Raman, Christopher Rufo and Jonathan Keeperman, BlazeTV hosts of “Rufo and Lomez,” aren’t sure it’s enough to bring him to victory.

But there is one faint hope that could push him over the edge.

“A reality television career, a media savvy campaign, an outsider political movement — can you actually bridge that gap and become … the mayor of Los Angeles?” Rufo asks skeptically.

He admits that the alternatives are bleak: “You have Karen Bass, the sitting mayor of L.A., who was a member of the Venceremos Brigade communist Cuban front group. … And then the third character is Nithya Raman … a hard-left democratic socialist in the vein of a Mamdani or a Saikat Chakrabarti, who ran the AOC campaign early on.”

Bass and Raman, Rufo explains, “are fighting over the actual power system in L.A. — who gets the union money, who gets the activist money, who gets the nonprofit money, who gets the public money, meaning who can dominate those institutions and ride them to power.”

Pratt’s “media-centric” campaign, albeit “savvy” and compelling, may not be enough to “overcome those institutions,” he says.

Co-host Jonathan Keeperman agrees: “It’s not even whether or not he runs a good campaign or whether this media strategy is effective or not. … It’s just a numbers game.”

He explains that the reality is that most of the people who will show up to vote in L.A.’s mayoral election are people who are “dependent on the state and city governance in some capacity for their livelihood.”

“They are working for the state probably and/or working for some kind of NGO that is itself working for the state, and so most of the voters here — and it’s largely going to be driven by union turnout — are dependent on precisely the institutions that someone like Karen Bass is promising to sort of keep intact and keep funding,” Keeperman predicts.

Pratt’s “only hope,” he says, is that enough “sideline” voters recognize that the horrific wildfires that destroyed thousands of acres and killed 31 people in January 2025 were due to “the failure of democratic governance.”

“I don’t mean to be a doomer here or sound too pessimistic, but no matter what Pratt does in terms of raising his profile at the national level and getting on social media … you’re just talking about a very narrow set of voters in the city of L.A., and they’re dependent on the city of L.A. government structure for their livelihood,” he says.

To hear more, watch the video above.

Want more from Rufo & Lomez?

To enjoy more of the news through the anthropological lens of Christopher Rufo and Lomez, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.