When Spencer Pratt emerged from a private West L.A. election-night party Tuesday to a crowd of adoring fans and interested reporters, he was glowingly giddy with optimism about his campaign to become mayor of Los Angeles after early returns showed he would finish second in the contest and advance to the general election in November against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.
“Obviously God wanted five more months of me exposing all of the failures of our mayor. So it’s going to be a fun ride. I hope she’s ready,” he said.
“Are you ready?” asked a reporter.
“I mean, I was born for this, clearly,” he said.
Born for what? Getting the 39% of votes in the general election that any candidate still breathing who has an (R) behind their name can expect to get even in the heavily Democratic city of L.A.?
As I flipped around the television coverage after the polls had closed on Tuesday, I came across Steve Hilton’s election-night party in Huntington Beach. Mmm … thought he was a Bay Area dude. Whatever. “Ladies and gentlemen,” said an announcer. “The next governor of California, Steve Hilton!” His walk-on song was “Aquarius / Let the Sunshine In” by The 5th Dimension, an appropriate SoCal choice for a Brit who has made a late career out of studying Golden State culture. Once onstage, as giddy as was Spencer Pratt just up the coast, the candidate pointed to a fan sporting a red ball cap with “Governor Hilton” stitched onto it. “We’re not quite there,” he laughed. “That’s November!”
Is it?
Steve Hilton got a bit more than 27% of Californians’ votes on Tuesday. If you add in the bit more than 11% fellow Republican Chad Bianco got, come November, there’s your 39% that is the contemporary ceiling for GOP candidates in the Golden State.
What is it that makes either a Pratt or a Hilton, both of them first-time candidates, entirely novices, believe that in the fall Democrats and independents who voted for a Nithya Raman or a Tom Steyer are going to switch their votes for the conservative Republicans opposite them on the ballot instead of the establishment Democrats in the persons of Xavier Becerra and of Bass?
Nothing rational, nothing numbers-based, nothing that a London bookie wouldn’t be glad to take odds on.
I get that, as a political candidate who has made it through one gauntlet of a long election process, and come out more or less on top, you have to exude confidence, even if it’s that of the heart rather than the head.
But just because Hilton got 27% of Californians’ votes compared with 25% for Becerra doesn’t mean that he won anything more than the right to have his name appear as a sacrificial lamb on the ballot in the next go-around. Because in what universe are any of the 20% of Californians who backed environmentalist Tom Steyer going to vote for Hilton over Becerra?
It’s not going to happen. The next mayor of Los Angeles is going to be Karen Bass, and the next governor of California is going to be Xavier Becerra.
Again, a fella has to put on a brave face. “Change is coming to California!” Hilton kept intoning from the stage. Even though it is not.
I’m not saying that there is no possibility that a magnetic, pragmatic Republican will someday be elected mayor of Los Angeles or governor of California. I will just point to a simple reason that it won’t be either of the Giddy Guys: Both of them accepted the endorsement of Donald Trump.
If they actually wanted to get elected instead of pretending that they did, weren’t just in it for the adrenaline rush of adoring crowds and national recognition, Pratt and Hilton should have run as fast as they could from the backing of the current president. You see Trump’s latest disapproval rating even in purple Orange County? It’s 62%. Imagine what it is in the city of L.A. Why would any candidate want to be attached to that?
“It’s looking good!” Hilton crowed from the stage. It won’t be, once the primary-night beer goggles come off.
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.