Reality stars turn political, Spencer Pratt enters Los Angeles mayor's race

Spencer Pratt turned a personal catastrophe into a viable political test case, announcing on Jan. 7 that he would run for mayor of Los Angeles after losing his home in the Pacific Palisades wildfire. By late May, a UC Berkeley-Los Angeles Times poll had him at 22%, just behind Mayor Karen Bass at 26% and City Councilmember Nithya Raman at 25%, a showing strong enough to raise the possibility of forcing a runoff.

The Pratt race captures a broader candidate-training pipeline that reality television has quietly built for politics. The format rewards message discipline, conflict performance, parasocial branding and the kind of rapid-response messaging that modern campaigns now demand. Pratt leaned directly into that style, criticizing state and local leaders over wildfire preparedness and response and calling his campaign a “mission.” In a city where mayoral elections are nonpartisan but Pratt is registered Republican, the numbers make the bid more than a stunt: Los Angeles has not had a GOP mayor in about a quarter century, and Republicans make up only about 15% of voters.

That tension between celebrity attention and political adaptation is what makes Pratt worth watching. A reality star can bring instant name recognition, but Pratt’s current polling suggests something more durable may be happening. He is testing whether a candidate with no traditional political resume can still use grievance, narrative control and constant media feedback to compete in a citywide race dominated by better-known officeholders.

Sean Duffy provides a different version of the same trajectory. Before becoming the 20th U.S. secretary of transportation, he appeared on MTV’s The Real World: Boston and Road Rules: All Stars, and he met his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, through reality television. Duffy was elected to the U.S. House from Wisconsin in 2010, a reminder that the skills honed on camera can translate into retail politics, message repetition and a comfort with public conflict. The Transportation Department says Duffy has also served as acting NASA administrator since July 9, 2025.

The limits of celebrity politics are visible in California as well. Caitlyn Jenner ran in the 2021 gubernatorial recall election, when voters kept Gavin Newsom in office, and finished with about 1.0% in the replacement-candidate race. That result showed that fame alone does not guarantee electoral traction, even in a state used to spectacle.

Still, the spectacle now matters more than it used to. Roxane Gay said in a PBS segment that there is “not a lot of reality” in reality television or politics, and that politicians need to understand performance. Pratt’s campaign suggests that lesson is no longer incidental. It is becoming part of the job description.