Spencer Pratt said Friday that the campaign portion of his mission to save Los Angeles was coming to a close, but the three-minute video he posted after his mayoral primary loss ended with a threat. He said, “It’s war,” told Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman to sleep well for the next five months, and suggested he would keep fighting in city politics.
Pratt took about 26% of the vote in the Los Angeles mayoral primary, finishing behind Raman, who won 29%, and Bass, who secured 34%. He fell short of the runoff, but in the video he said he was not leaving town and would stay active locally, even as he attacked both women as “morons” and “corrupt communists.”
He also tried to frame the loss as a shift rather than an exit. “I didn’t get into this for political power, I got in it to expose this corrupt machine and nothing has changed,” he said, adding that he would now be bolder because he no longer had to worry about offending viewers. In the same video, he said he and his team had recordings of one of the candidates doing or saying something that would force her to resign in shame, though he did not identify the material or say when it might be released.
The bluntest warning came when he turned directly to Bass and Raman. “So, Karen, Nithya, ask yourself is it possible that one of your employees may have a recording of you doing or saying something that would force you to resign in disgrace?” he said, before warning that they should worry about potential FBI raids at their homes and offices. He also said, “Angelenos are now stuck with two morons responsible for all their problems and they have to choose between dumb and dumber,” and predicted the city would tumble headlong into the abyss.
The video lands against a campaign centered on homelessness, blight, the Palisades Fire and recovery, all issues Pratt repeatedly tied to what he described as city failure. A late May UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by The Times showed him viewed unfavorably by 57% of likely voters in Los Angeles, while 25% of Angelenos viewed him favorably. Bass was also viewed unfavorably by 57% of likely voters in the same poll, suggesting Pratt’s outsider pitch never broke through, even as it kept drawing attention.
Pratt said the Palisades Fire destroyed his home and that his mother and neighbors in the Palisades have not slept well for the last 17 months, underscoring how closely he has tied his campaign to the city’s most painful failures. Bass has been mayor for nearly four years, and Pratt’s language makes clear he intends to keep pressing her and Raman from outside the race. The question now is not whether he is done campaigning; it is whether he turns the recordings claim into anything public, or keeps using the threat as a weapon in Los Angeles politics.
