Republican Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt is taking the internet by storm, utilizing a strategy employed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani during his underdog campaign. Both spent their efforts on social media virality, putting traditional advertising on the back burner.
There’s no questioning how effective his campaign has been thus far. He’s taken his opponents’ attacks and turned them into viral clips. Whether it’s shrugging off MAGA accusations or defending his hotel expenses by pointing out how Democratic policies cost him his home in the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, nothing the Left throws at Pratt seems to stick.
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Pratt should be known as the “anti-Mamdani” — a perfect foil to the charismatic young blue city mayor, with a polar opposite political persuasion.
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“Even socialists like me,” Pratt boasted on Fox & Friends this week. And in true anti-Mamdani fashion, he responded, “Sorry, I don’t mess with socialists.”
The main question I have with Pratt’s campaign is: Who is his audience? He’s not running for national, or even statewide office, but one particular solidly liberal city. While his clips and ads may be going viral on social media, these are largely being shared by people outside the city he’s seeking to represent. So while he’s been massively effective at generating online engagement, it remains to be seen how much of that is coming from Los Angeles.
But this is a two-edged sword. Just because many of his fans ostensibly come from outside Los Angeles, that doesn’t mean they can’t be helpful to his campaign — they can, and do, donate. Out of the top three mayoral candidates, Pratt has the highest percentage of contributions coming from outside California, with 33%. Bass, who also has national name recognition, has only received 16% of her donations from outside the Golden State. And socialist city councilwoman Nithya Raman trails behind them both with 14%.
In the latest filing period, Pratt raised nearly 10 times more than Bass — the incumbent. This is eerily similar to the New York City mayoral race, when Mamdani outraised his opponents by pulling in the most out-of-state donations by far.
For all of Mamdani’s flaws, and there are too many to count, the man proved to be a master of social media virality, courting him a national audience which fueled his grassroots campaign to take on the New York political establishment. Pratt is a common-sense candidate, not an extremist like Mamdani (or the other two Los Angeles mayoral candidates, for that matter). That makes him a lot more electable to centrist and anti-establishment constituents.
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Nothing will persuade the radical Left to vote for a Republican — that would be sacrilegious in the liberal orthodoxy — but if there are enough rational liberals in Los Angeles to outnumber the radical ones, Pratt has set up the perfect campaign to court their vote.
One might recall during the 2024 election, when Democrats used Charlie XCX’s brat album to astroturf former Vice President Kamala Harris. Young liberals rallied around her campaign, calling it “brat summer.” In Los Angeles, the forecast calls for a “pratt summer” — the difference being it’s a grassroots movement normal people relate to, rather than the cringe-fest forced upon us two years ago.
