Spencer Pratt released a video Friday in which he appeared to concede his loss in the Los Angeles mayoral primary — then pivoted into an extended broadside against Councilmember Nithya Raman, Mayor Karen Bass and the state of the city one of them will be elected to lead.
Pratt started the three-minute video by saying that the “campaign portion of my mission to save Los Angeles is coming to a close.” The video then turned out to be less about conceding the election and more about Pratt’s plan to continue fighting against the mayor and councilmember using his newfound national platform.
“I didn’t get into this for political power, I got in it to expose this corrupt machine and nothing has changed,” he said.
“Angelenos are now stuck with two morons responsible for all their problems and they have to choose between dumb and dumber…The city will tumble headlong into the abyss.”
The video was full of ad hominem attacks. He called Bass and Raman “morons,” “commie animals” and “corrupt communists,” telling Angelenos to “pick your demon.”
Neither the Bass nor Raman campaigns immediately responded to a request for comment on the video, nor did Pratt’s campaign.
“We have some recordings of one of your exalted candidates doing and saying something that would make her resign in shame,” said Pratt. “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? Hope you sleep well at night over the next five months.”
The video seemed to mark the end of Pratt’s outsider campaign, during which he captured the national spotlight highlighting what he called the city’s failures to handle the homelessness crisis as well as the Palisades fire and recovery.
Pratt took in about 26% of the vote, falling short of qualifying for the runoff behind Raman, who won 29%, and Bass, who secured the first place spot with 34%.
Despite his strong, third-place performance, and national support from conservative voices, a late May poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times, showed that Pratt was viewed unfavorably by 57% of likely voters in the city of Los Angeles — the same percentage as Bass, who has been mayor for nearly four years. Only 25% of Angelenos viewed him favorably, the poll found, in line with the percentage of the vote he ended up receiving.
But Pratt said in the video that has no desire to fade out of the public eye, and that his loss will allow him to be bolder as he no longer has to worry about “offending CNN viewers.”
“I don’t have campaign laws hamstringing me now. It’s war,” he said.
Pratt continued in the video to paint Los Angeles as a dysfunctional hellscape, arguing blight in the city will cause more businesses to close, reducing the city’s revenue and forcing Los Angeles to cut back services, resulting in “more potholes, less firefighters, less police patrols.”
Pratt ended the video by saying that Bass and Raman should worry about potential FBI raids at their homes and offices.
“You think your election was going to stop me?” Pratt said at the end of the video with an image that read “WAR.”
