Spencer Pratt concedes Los Angeles mayor race, declares war on rivals

Spencer Pratt’s mayoral run ended the way many observers expected, but his response kept the race from fading quietly. After it became clear he would not advance from Los Angeles’ June 2 nonpartisan top-two primary, the former reality television star posted a video conceding the contest and saying his campaign was over even as he threatened to keep fighting Karen Bass and Nithya Raman.

The result placed Pratt inside a wider and still unsettled political fight. Bass, the incumbent, was seeking a second term against a dozen challengers, and the contest drew attention because Pratt had become an improbable but serious enough presence to shape the runoff conversation. Donald Trump had given Pratt a nod of approval, while Raman ultimately overtook him as more ballots were counted after election night.

That counting process mattered. Los Angeles County kept processing vote-by-mail, provisional and outstanding ballots for days after the primary, and a June 10 update showed only 37.74% of registered voters had been counted. Some voters still had until June 24, 2026, to return signature-curing notices, leaving the result fluid even after Pratt’s path to the general election had effectively closed.

What followed from Pratt was less a conventional concession than a test of the city’s political mood. NBC Los Angeles reported that he used the phrase “It’s war,” and The New York Times said he did not echo election-fraud claims. That distinction matters. In a national moment where defeated candidates increasingly frame loss as illegitimacy, Pratt stopped short of Trump-style fraud rhetoric but still turned a local mayoral race into an aggressive grievance campaign.

His support was never broad enough to make him a frontrunner citywide, but it was not meaningless. One local analysis said Pratt won roughly half the vote in his own fire-scarred Pacific Palisades neighborhood, where the devastation from the wildfire and the housing crisis helped fuel his appeal. He launched his bid after speaking at a Palisades Fire Residents Coalition rally, tying his campaign to residents who felt abandoned after the flames.

Bass now heads into a runoff that is notable for another reason: it is the first for a Los Angeles mayoral incumbent since 2005. Pratt’s collapse from contender to agitator suggests his direct influence over voters remains narrow, but the style of politics he embraced has already left a mark. In a city still counting ballots and still absorbing the fallout from fire, housing strain and distrust, the more lasting story may be how quickly defeat can be recast as a promise of escalation.