Just when it looked like Los Angeles voters might deliver a political curveball, the city’s election machine had other plans.
Reality TV personality and wildfire victim Spencer Pratt watched a commanding election-night lead evaporate over the weekend as progressive City Council member Nithya Raman surged ahead in the race to challenge incumbent Mayor Karen Bass this November.
Pratt, who had built a roughly 40,000-vote advantage on election night — about a ten-point lead — appeared well-positioned to claim one of the two runoff spots in the officially nonpartisan mayoral contest. But as Los Angeles continued its notoriously slow ballot-counting process, the tide turned dramatically.
By Sunday evening, updated vote totals showed Raman ahead by approximately 3,000 votes. Election analysts at Decision Desk HQ projected that the self-described democratic socialist would advance to the November showdown against Bass, ending Pratt’s bid.
The turnaround was nothing short of stunning. A candidate who seemed headed for defeat on election night suddenly found herself moving into the runoff thanks to a steady stream of ballots counted in the days afterward.
Pratt’s campaign had tapped into one of the most emotional issues facing Los Angeles residents: the catastrophic wildfires that devastated Southern California in early 2025. Pratt and his family lost their home in the disaster, one of thousands of properties destroyed as fires tore through communities across the region.
Throughout the campaign, Pratt hammered Bass and City Hall over what he characterized as bureaucratic incompetence, weak leadership, and a failure to adequately prepare for or respond to the disaster. He also repeatedly blasted city leaders over homelessness, public safety concerns, and the visible decline of many Los Angeles neighborhoods.
For a brief moment, voters appeared ready to reward that message.
Then came the ballot dumps.
As new batches of votes were added to the tally, Raman steadily chipped away at Pratt’s advantage before eventually overtaking him. The reversal sparked immediate speculation online, particularly among Pratt supporters who questioned how such a dramatic swing could occur after election night.
Pratt himself added fuel to those questions with a social media post highlighting the scale of the reversal. Sharing an article about Los Angeles’ homeless population, he wrote:
“A net swing of more than 43,000 votes since Tuesday..”
“43,000, huh? Where have I seen that number before…?”
“Probably nothing.”
The jab was classic Pratt: sarcastic, provocative, and guaranteed to get people talking.
Meanwhile, Mayor Bass wasted little time pivoting from Pratt to her newly projected opponent.
Her campaign immediately began framing Raman as an out-of-touch progressive whose policies are even further left than Bass herself. Bass spokesperson Alex Stack fired this shot at Raman: “We look forward to winning a contest against an opponent who allows encampments near schools and fights against hiring more cops, yet is MIA on saving Hollywood jobs and fighting back when ICE invades LA.”
So, instead of a showdown between establishment City Hall and an anti-establishment outsider whose life was upended by California’s wildfire failures, voters now appear headed toward a contest between two Democrats arguing over who can move Los Angeles further to the left.
