Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, the former reality television star, looked in TV news interviews Tuesday night as if he had won his first political race, rather than having taken, at this writing, about 30% of the vote.
Perhaps in a way he had won, as it appears he has made the November runoff election against Mayor Karen Bass, who so far has just short of 35% of votes counted. With California’s slow count as mailed ballots trickle in, we won’t know the final tally for days. But without a dramatic change in the numbers, Pratt rather than Councilwoman Nithya Raman will face the embattled incumbent again in the fall.
Guess that means L.A. wasn’t quite ready to go all NYC Mamdani after all.
“Well, obviously God wanted five more months of me exposing all the failures of our mayor, so it’s gonna be a fun ride,” Pratt said after the polls closed. “I hope she’s ready.”
Pratt’s giddy optimism matched almost precisely front runner Steve Hilton’s in the gubernatorial race. Given our state’s electoral makeup, logic would dictate both GOP first-time candidates will receive something short of 40% of the votes in the general election. But, sure, time will tell. Bass, considering public discontent with her after the Palisades fire, has to be thrilled she survived the challenge from Raman within her own party.
Still and all, and as much as people complain about the quality of the candidates for both L.A. mayor and California governor, Bass’s relative strength here is nothing short of amazing. Much more amazing, in fact, than Spencer Pratt getting all the Republican votes, which he was bound to do on his Trumpian rampage of a campaign, endorsed by the president, and who wants that?
Old-fashioned Republicans who cared about high competence and rational government spending would have voted for the excellent moderate Democratic candidate Adam Miller, a fabulously wealthy self-made entrepreneur who stood for government transparency, innovation and public safety. But who cares about excellent candidates in the ridiculous year of 2026?
So Pratt is thrilled, and Hilton is thrilled, because they think they’ve already won when actually they have already lost.
L.A. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto, on the other hand, can’t be thrilled to be in third place, trailing Marissa Roy from the left and John McKinney from the right.
But Controller Kenneth Mejia, with almost 60% of the vote so far, showed that his opponent Zach Sokoloff’s mom’s $7 million couldn’t sway the election.
Rational folks were heartened to see Los Angeles County voters rejecting a new sales-tax hike on their purchases in Measure ER, supposedly aimed at shoring up health care but in fact just more money for the general fund. Sales taxes hit the poorest hardest, and are already too high.
There were no surprises in the county supervisor races; Maria Elena Durazo’s election to the Board of Supervisors keeps five women in charge of L.A. County.
Little Monterey Park showed just how wary citizens are of hosting AI data centers with its 86% approval of Measure NDC, banning them in the city. Big Tech created AI in California, but Californians are clearly nothing if not opinionated about the side effects.
And in Pasadena, my hometown, two City Council candidates faced only token opposition and one no opposition at all, so I guess everything is up to date in River City.
Write the public editor at lwilson@scng.com