Spencer Pratt Was Right: LA Is Paying the Price for Ignoring Him

Nobody in American politics is having a more vindicated moment right now than Spencer Pratt — and if that sentence makes you uncomfortable, you should sit with that discomfort, because it tells you everything about the state of Los Angeles politics in 2026.

Let's be blunt about what is happening in the City of Angels. Democratic Socialist Nithya Raman, a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, now holds an 11-point lead over incumbent Mayor Karen Bass — 39% to 28% — with six weeks to go before November 3rd. A third of likely voters remain undecided. And the man who called this outcome months ago, dismissed as a punchline by the political establishment, is posting "Good luck LA" on social media while the rest of the city's political class scrambles to explain itself.

Pratt, the conservative-leaning independent who finished third in the June primary with 26% of the vote, warned anyone who would listen: if you don't back me, Raman beats Bass. The political intelligentsia laughed. Voters who might have broken for Pratt split between skepticism and indifference. And now, with 63% of his former supporters still undecided in the general election — with only 22% currently leaning Bass and 16% leaning Raman — the race for America's second-largest city is teetering on a knife's edge that Pratt himself sharpened.

We want to make something clear: this is not really about Spencer Pratt. It's about what his rise, his warning, and his vindication reveal about the catastrophic failure of the Los Angeles Democratic establishment to hold the center.

Bass Is Radioactive — And She Did It to Herself

Karen Bass sits at a 63% unfavorable rating among Los Angeles voters. Sixty-three percent. That is not a politician in a tough race. That is a politician in freefall. Only 28% of her own city holds a positive view of her — the exact same number as her polling share. In other words, essentially the only people who still like Karen Bass are the people still willing to vote for her. She has zero margin for persuasion. There is no reservoir of goodwill left to tap.

Compare that to Raman, who sits at 40% favorable against 39% unfavorable — a near-even split that, in a city as left-leaning as Los Angeles, we think gives her enormous runway with undecided younger voters. The generational data is particularly damning for Bass: Raman dominates voters aged 18 to 39, while Bass leads those 65 and older by 20 points. In a city being remade demographically in real time, that age gap could be the final nail in Bass's political coffin.

Bass made this bed. She campaigned for Raman's 2024 city council re-election. She took family photos with her. She helped legitimize a DSA member as a mainstream Democratic figure — and now that same DSA member entered the mayoral race at the last possible moment, as Pratt colorfully noted, filing "10 minutes before the clerk's office closed." Bass nurtured the socialist wing of her party, and the socialist wing is now consuming her. We'd call it poetic justice if the people of Los Angeles weren't the ones who will suffer the consequences.

What a Raman Victory Would Actually Mean

Let's not get lost in the political theater and lose sight of the stakes. Nithya Raman is not a progressive Democrat in the conventional mold. She is a DSA member who has openly said the organization will remain a "partner" to City Hall if she wins. The DSA — the same organization that has endorsed open hostility to law enforcement, market-rate housing, and American foreign policy alliances — would have a seat at the table governing the second-largest city in the United States.

Los Angeles is already a city grappling with a homelessness crisis that Bass largely failed to resolve, a cost-of-living catastrophe that is driving middle-class families to Texas and Arizona, and public safety concerns that establishment Democrats have chronically underfunded and mismanaged. Handing the keys to a DSA-aligned mayor backed by local union chapters does not solve any of those problems. It accelerates them.

Pratt's social media post put it with characteristic bluntness: "Socialists have no morals. They'll gut you, too." Say what you will about the messenger — and the political class said plenty — but the message deserves to be heard in every suburb and neighborhood council meeting between now and November 3rd.

The Undecided Pratt Voters Are the Ballgame

Here is the cold political math: 63% of Pratt's primary supporters remain undecided. Pratt pulled 26% in the June primary. That is a massive block of persuadable voters — largely conservative-leaning, deeply dissatisfied with both remaining candidates, and currently holding the fate of Los Angeles in their hands.

Bass's camp is banking on those voters ultimately choosing the lesser of two evils. But Bass's 63% unfavorable rating suggests she may be incapable of making that case effectively. Raman's camp is betting that momentum and enthusiasm carry the day, and with an 11-point lead and a generational tailwind, she has reason for optimism.

We think the most consequential question between now and November 3rd is not whether Bass can close the gap — it's whether anyone can make a compelling case to Pratt's former voters that showing up at all is worth their time. Because if they stay home, Los Angeles will get exactly the government it deserves: one that Spencer Pratt predicted, one that Karen Bass helped create, and one that the rest of the country will watch as a cautionary tale about what happens when you let the radical left run unopposed.

The Los Angeles mayor's race is now ground zero for a much larger battle over the Democratic Party's direction — and the outcome will send shockwaves through every urban political race in 2027 and beyond. Stay with us as we track every development between now and Election Day.