{"id":2416605,"date":"2026-05-14T15:11:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T15:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2416605"},"modified":"2026-05-14T15:11:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T15:11:17","slug":"opinion-unfortunately-we-have-to-take-spencer-pratt-seriously-as-a-politician","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/opinion-unfortunately-we-have-to-take-spencer-pratt-seriously-as-a-politician\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Unfortunately, We Have to Take Spencer Pratt Seriously as a Politician"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As an avid watcher of \u201cThe Hills\u201d in the mid-aughts, I think Pratt is a particularly ill-suited entrant in the Los Angeles mayoral primary, which is a nonpartisan election. He was the dark prince of \u201cThe Hills,\u201d spreading vile rumors<\/a> about castmates. Pratt and his wife and \u201cHills\u201d co-star, Heidi Montag, blew through $10 million<\/a> and at one point had to move into a house his parents owned. In a memoir published this year, he explained<\/a> that he spent $500,000 on Birkin bags for Montag and over $1 million on crystals. So he\u2019s not a person I would trust on the fiscal management \u2014 to name just one responsibility \u2014 of a major American city struggling to balance its budget<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I watched last week\u2019s Los Angeles mayoral debate<\/a> with full knowledge of Pratt\u2019s history. I have to admit that he dominated that performance. I\u2019m not alone in that impression: As of Tuesday afternoon, 90 percent of participants in an online poll on NBC Los Angeles\u2019s<\/a> website said he won the debate.<\/p>\n

Pratt, a registered Republican, has said that he is running for office because he and his parents lost their homes in the horrific Palisades fire in January 2025 and the incumbent, Mayor Karen Bass, a registered Democrat, did not have compelling explanations<\/a> for her mishandling of the disaster. (She was out of the country when the fire started.) After the fire, her standing with Angelenos<\/a> fell and never recovered. \u201cI blame this person for burning my house and my parents\u2019 house and my town and all my neighbors\u2019 down. I am not working with Mayor Bass,\u201d Pratt said.<\/p>\n

During the debate, the moderator asked about the homelessness crisis<\/a>, \u201cDo you support the ordinance that restricts encampments in front of schools or day care centers?\u201d and requested that the candidates answer with a straightforward \u201cyes or no.\u201d The City Council member Nithya Raman, a registered Democrat and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, responded with \u201cI, you know, I, I, support keeping our streets safe. I did vote against the structure of this particular ordinance, and it is because at its best \u2014 \u2014\u201d before being interrupted by the moderator.<\/p>\n

The main reason Pratt was effective in the debate \u2014 and, it seems, more broadly in his campaign of late \u2014 is that he is channeling the anger that some Los Angeles residents feel about the state of their city. \u201cI talk to thousands of moms a week. They do not feel safe in the street, no matter what these crime statistics are telling anybody,\u201d he said. He ranted about fentanyl, supermeth and people being stabbed on the street. If you believe that crime is out of hand, hearing someone express that vehemently and authentically is far more compelling than Raman\u2019s careful answers about establishing a Bureau of Homelessness Oversight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nytimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As an avid watcher of \u201cThe Hills\u201d in the mid-aughts, I think Pratt is a particularly ill-suited entrant in the Los Angeles mayoral primary, which is a nonpartisan election. He was the dark prince of \u201cThe Hills,\u201d spreading vile rumors about castmates. Pratt and his wife and \u201cHills\u201d co-star, Heidi Montag, blew through $10 million […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2416608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[473095,350901,333487,44729,473100,473094,473092,473099,426963,473091,473086,473096,473085,473090,473097,473088,356881,473087,343488,305249,473098,473093,352134,354079,473089],"class_list":["post-2416605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-andy-1968","tag-bass","tag-bono","tag-bravo","tag-clint","tag-cohen","tag-duffy","tag-eastwood","tag-heidi","tag-home-box-office","tag-karen-ruth","tag-leakes","tag-los-angeles-calif","tag-montag","tag-nene","tag-nithya","tag-pratt","tag-raman","tag-reagan","tag-reality-television","tag-ronald-wilson","tag-sean-p","tag-sonny","tag-spencer","tag-the-hills-tv-program"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Opinion-Unfortunately-We-Have-to-Take-Spencer-Pratt-Seriously.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2416605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2416605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2416605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2416609,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2416605\/revisions\/2416609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2416608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2416605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2416605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2416605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}