On one level it was simply one reality star giving another what he considered the ultimate compliment.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday before boarding Air Force One, the president of the United States and former host of “The Apprentice” declared that Spencer Pratt – the villain of MTV’s “The Hills” and current candidate for mayor of America’s second-largest city – is “a big MAGA person” whom he’d “like to see do well.”
Just like that, Pratt’s insurgent meme-filled campaign for Los Angeles mayor, which is giving incumbent Mayor Karen Bass a run for her money in California’s sprawling deep-blue metropolis, took yet another unpredictable turn.
Pratt, a 42-year-old reality TV star who launched his candidacy in January after losing his Pacific Palisades home in the devastating 2025 wildfires, is running as an independent, building his campaign around voter fury at incumbent Bass and her handling of the disaster’s aftermath. He has worked carefully to cast himself as a nonpartisan outsider – “I represent all of Los Angeles,” he has said – even as MAGA-aligned personalities have applauded his combative social-media driven rise.
Trump’s endorsement – or near-endorsement, really, since the president was characteristically vague, saying he assumed Pratt “probably supports me” before veering into a tangent about “rigged” ballots and mail-in voting in California – sent a tremor through the city’s political landscape. The question immediately consuming strategists closely watching the race on both sides of the aisle is whether Trump’s terse praise, however quick and casual, helps or hurts the man it was meant to boost.
Will Trump Blunt Pratt’s Momentum in Deep Blue L.A.?
The city Pratt is running to lead is not fertile ground for Trump’s blessing. Los Angeles County broke for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election by 65% to 32%. The city has not elected a Republican mayor in nearly three decades. And only 18% of registered city voters are Republicans.
Against that backdrop, veteran Democratic strategists were quick to render their verdict.
“A Trump endorsement only helps with Republicans,” Democratic consultant Steve Maviglio told RealClearPolitics. “In Los Angeles, it’s a kiss of death. Pratt might get protest votes in June from Democrats. But when push comes to shove, Los Angeles, with its heavily Latino and black populations and deep blue Democratic base, isn’t going to elect a mayor who is embraced by Trump.”
“And you can be sure that Mayor Bass will do everything she can to remind voters that they are MAGA twins,” he added.
Bass’ campaign didn’t wait long to make exactly that point. Within hours of Trump’s comments, a campaign Bass went on offense.
“No surprises here — both Trump and Pratt want ICE to invade our city and kidnap our neighbors,” she tweeted.
Raman also re-posted a Fox News video of Trump praising Pratt, emphasizing the Trump line, “I heard he’s a big MAGA person.”
Pratt responded with a brief X.com post with a video of him rolling his eyes and mocking Raman during his debate with her and Bass earlier this month.
Garry South, a longtime Democratic political consultant who has worked on major California statewide campaigns, sees a two-act drama playing out – with a very different ending to each.
“The Trump endorsement helped Hilton separate from Bianco and gave him a clear path to make the runoff,” South said, referring to the parallel dynamic in the California governor’s race, where Trump’s April endorsement of former Fox News host Steve Hilton effectively sidelined GOP rival and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.
But in a runoff with a Democrat, Pratt will find it difficult to shake the “Trump taint,” he said.
South’s arithmetic is unsparing.
“Trump got exactly 38% of the vote in California in 2024, and his approval rating statewide right now ranges from 25 to 29%,” he said. “Likewise with Pratt. Trump’s support probably puts him in the runoff, but is a death sentence against Bass, in a city where only 18% of the voters are registered Republicans.”
“Trump’s apparently feeling all powerful because he got rid of Sen. Cassidy in Louisiana. But L.A. ain’t LA,” he added, referring to Cassidy’s stinging defeat in the Louisiana GOP primary earlier this week. Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow and state treasurer John Fleming will now advance to a runoff.
Primary Math: California Republicans Are Energized
If the general election calculus looks like a long-shot for Pratt, the primary picture is more nuanced – and potentially favorable.
The latest Emerson College/Inside California Politics poll, conducted May 9-10, shows Bass leading with 30%, Pratt surging to 22% in second place, and L.A. Councilwoman Nithya Raman at 19%. Under Los Angeles election rules, if no candidate wins a majority in the June 2 primary, the top two finishers advance to a November runoff – a scenario that appears all but certain given the current three-way split.
Pratt’s rise has been swift. As recently as March, a UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs poll placed him at just 11%; a UC Berkeley/Los Angeles Times poll had him at 14%; and in early March, an Emerson survey showed him at barely 10%.
The rocket-like ascent is driven largely by a consolidation among Republican-leaning and male voters – exactly the universe a Trump endorsement energizes.
That surge is a direct result of Pratt’s mastery of the viral AI video. A series of AI-generated clips promoting Pratt, some of which were created by Los Angeles-based filmmaker Charlie Curran of Menace Studios, began circulating on social media in late April and early May, racking up millions of views and reshaping the race’s media narrative virtually overnight.
The most attention-grabbing clips cast Pratt as a Batman-like figure swooping over a Gotham-esque Los Angeles in flames, with Mayor Bass rendered as the Joker, flanked by a scheming Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris. Drawing on the mob-trial scenes from Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises,” the ad depicted ordinary Angelenos dragged before uncaring Democratic elites and ridiculed for asking for help after the wildfires.
“Spencer Pratt’s LA mayor ads are incredible,” sports and political media personality Clay Travis wrote on social media, a sentiment that ricocheted across right-leaning platforms.
Pratt’s campaign has been careful to describe the most incendiary videos as fan-made rather than official advertising, a distinction that has provided only partial cover. California Assemblymember Marc Berman and former Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo, both Democrats, have argued that Pratt’s actions may be in violation of laws they authored and were passed in recent years, which require public disclosures for certain AI-made campaign materials.
Bass has described the viral AI-made videos as indicative of “a very dangerous trend,” arguing the Pratt campaign “is now taking on a violent turn” and citing clips that depict “drowning me and the governor in a reservoir.”
The audacious attack videos are certainly unprecedented, and along with the strong GOP candidates’ performance in the governor’s race, may be fueling a surge in early GOP turnout across California.
According to figures from the research firm Political Data Intelligence, Republicans currently make up 37% of returned mail-in ballots in the California primary. That represents an 11-point surge from the same point in the 2022 midterms. Democrats, who make up nearly half of all mail-in ballots sent, account for only 41% of those returned – a 13-point drop from 2022.
The county-level numbers are even more striking for a party that has been written off in deep-blue California. In San Diego County, Republican return rates are running nearly double those of Democrats. In Los Angeles – where Pratt is trying to unseat Bass – Republican turnout is similarly running at twice the Democratic rate, even as Democrats hold a substantial numerical registration advantage.
PDI Vice President Paul Mitchell has suggested two possible explanations: that Republicans may be returning to pre-2020 mail voting habits after years of skepticism stoked by Trump himself, or that some Democrats are deliberately holding their ballots, waiting to see which candidates make the runoff before committing their vote. Either way, the data offers encouragement for Pratt’s camp – and warning signs for Bass’ and Raman’s campaigns.
With California Republicans more attuned than usual to the big races, some view Trump’s endorsements as net positives in the primary, not only for the top races, but for down-ballot candidates as well. Mike Netter, a Republican state senate candidate who helped organize the 2021 recall campaign against Gov. Gavin Newsom, argues the Trump effect is simpler and more powerful than skeptics allow.
“President Trump brings out turnout – period,” Netter said. That’s good for Republicans and the whole ticket.”
It’s a point the polling data doesn’t entirely contradict. The structural reality of the June primary is that Trump’s name could function as a turnout signal for a small but potentially decisive slice of the electorate.
The Hilton Parallel – and Its Limits
The governor’s race offers a cautionary parable that cuts both ways.
When Trump endorsed Steve Hilton in April, the move immediately scrambled Republican hopes of placing two GOP candidates in the November runoff. Political analysts noted that by concentrating Republican support around one candidate rather than splitting it, Trump may have inadvertently ensured a Democrat would make the general election.
“Trump kills any GOP hopes of an R vs. R runoff in the California governor’s race,” Rob Pyers of California Target Book wrote at the time.
Yet UCLA professor of public policy Jim Newton identified the same paradox now being debated in the mayor’s race: “I think it helps Hilton through the primary, probably, or could push him into the runoff, and it’s devastating for him in a runoff election. The paradox of this is that it’s short-term helpful and long-term damaging.”
General Election Strategy
Rob Stutzman, who served as deputy chief of staff to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and has watched Republican candidates navigate the state’s political terrain for decades, sees a possible way out – but it requires messaging discipline and a forgiving electorate.
“Trump is a 30% proposition in California and far less in City of L.A.,” Stutzman said, referring to the top ceiling of GOP support that Trump’s backing can help attract. “I’m guessing you won’t see Pratt or Hilton talking about Trump if they make the general election, and when they do, they’ll emphasize they’ll be able to work with him to deliver good things for the state and city. Not really a selling point, but the best way to mitigate their Trump baggage.”
The strategic imperative, Stutzman argued, is to change the subject entirely if Pratt and Hilton make it to the general election.
“What they both have the chance to do is localize their elections away from the national anti-Trump framing to the California blue state governance is incompetent framing,” Stutzman stressed.
That’s the argument Pratt has been trying to drive home since announcing his candidacy on Jan. 7, 2026 – the one-year anniversary of the Palisades Fire.
“Standing here one year later, I have to tell you the most heartbreaking part of the last year wasn’t being displaced or losing everything I own,” Pratt said at the time. “It was the realization that all of this was preventable.”
That message – local grief, local failure, local accountability – is a powerful one in a city scarred by the wildfires and downtown blight and homelessness. More than half of Los Angeles voters currently view Bass unfavorably, polls show, a remarkable vulnerability for an incumbent. But the challenge for Pratt is that Trump’s endorsement, and especially Trump’s own comments about California’s elections being “rigged,” risk drowning out that locally calibrated message in a flood of national partisan noise.
Even some of Pratt’s own supporters seemed to sense the danger. “Might have just lost the election for him,” one user wrote on social media after Trump’s comments about mail-in ballot fraud. “The one thing so many here are on the fence about was will he become like Trump.”
Pratt previously responded to an attempt by Raman to link him to Trump by posting: “I have the only endorsement I need. Moms and animal lovers who want to feel safe.” The message was a studied attempt to pivot back to the local and the personal – exactly the strategy Stutzman prescribed.
A Late Primary Gift for Bass
For Bass, Trump’s Pratt praise, however quick and off-the-cuff, was a gift wrapped in a red MAGA hat. Her campaign’s aggressive response – tying Pratt directly to Trump on immigration enforcement – signals how central the “MAGA twins” framing will be to her general election strategy if Pratt makes the runoff.
It’s a playbook with a proven California track record. In the 2024 U.S. Senate race, Democrat Adam Schiff defeated Republican Steve Garvey by 20 points after successfully nationalizing the contest around Trump. Newsom also deployed the same fight Trump strategy last fall to win overwhelming approval for his gerrymandered-to-the-extreme new congressional district maps. In a city where Trump’s approval rating is likely lower than his statewide numbers, any close association between Pratt and Trump is risky territory.
Pratt’s campaign, with his confrontational style and viral video following, is eons more effective that Garvey’s somnolent run.
But the political math is still stark. Even if Pratt consolidates nearly every Republican voter in Los Angeles in a general election, he will need to win a substantial share of Democratic and independent voters to prevail in November. Those voters, in the current political environment, are being asked to choose between their dissatisfaction with Bass’s tenure and their long-running opposition to Trump and Trumpism.
Still, if all politics really is local, Pratt may have a chance both in the primary and the general.
