The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor recently dropped an ad “attacking” Republican mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt.
The ad repeatedly mentions he’s a Republican, that he “opposes using taxpayer money to build brand new houses for our unhoused neighbors,” notes that he thinks “LA needs thousands more police officers” and that “public employee unions should have less power.”
Many hyper-online right-wingers jumped on the ad, observing that this ad actually makes Pratt sound great.
Said one on X: “You cannot convince me that this is not an ad by Spencer Pratt, pretending to be an anti-Spencer Pratt ad put out by the LA County Federation of labor. This is so deliberately bad and clearly highlights why Spencer Pratt should be mayor of Los Angeles.”
Said another: “This stupid ad is going to red pill more people to switch to registered Republicans”
Fox News jumped on it, reporting (if that’s the word), “A political advertisement opposing Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt is drawing attention online as critics argue the messaging could ultimately benefit the former reality TV star instead of hurt his campaign.”
It’s a reminder of something very important: hyper-online, X-addicted Republicans and right-wingers in California don’t know anything about politics. They’re as removed from reality as hyper-online, Twitter-addicted Democrats and left-wingers were just a few years ago.
The ad is designed to unite and energize conservatives and right-wingers behind Spencer Pratt and nudge them to vote for him. Hence the repeated reference to “Republican,” the use of key words like “unhoused neighbors” and the reference to hiring of thousands of cops.
Why? The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which endorsed Mayor Karen Bass, knows that Bass will easily win re-election if she has to face off with Pratt in the general election. And it won’t be close, because Los Angeles is an overwhelmingly Democratic city.
It’s the same strategy we saw in the U.S. Senate primaries a couple years ago in which Democrat Adam Schiff boosted Republican Steve Garvey to block Democrat Katie Porter from getting into second place.
What the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor doesn’t want to happen is for anyone other than Pratt to face off against Bass.
If either democratic socialist Councilmember Nithya Raman or the more center-left Adam Miller made it into the runoff against Bass, Bass would face much stiffer competition as Raman and Miller could pull from a much broader pool of voters than Pratt could.
All that needs to happen is for Pratt to get into second place in the primary. So the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor is doing its part to help that happen by going out of its way to attack him.
That’s it. That’s all it is.
Sal Rodriguez can be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com