Welcome to Prattville

What a realty star running for mayor says about politics and why we’re still talking about Spencer Pratt two decades later.

Inflation is sending the economy towards a recession. The Devil Wears Prada and Jackass are in theatres. The Vans Warp Tour is on this summer. Your favourite emo rock bands all have new music out. Britney is in both the news and in trouble with the law. There’s conflict in the Middle East. Spencer Pratt is beefing with Lauren Conrad.

No, it’s not 2008 - it’s 2026. But it certainly seems like we’re back there. And very much like the Hollywood sign beaming like a beacon, calling out to those with stars in their eyes, why wouldn’t a reality star be a candidate in the LA mayoral race? It has all the trappings of a captivating reality show.

Overview 

Like many cities, Los Angeles has a civic election at the end of this year. And for most of us, this wouldn’t be on our radar yet. But this is 2026, and times have changed. Well, sort of. And the LA mayoral race shot into the collective zeitgeist largely because of one person: Spencer Pratt. Most Millennials know Pratt from MTV’s mid-2000s juggernaut reality show, The Hills. And ever since then, Pratt’s been on a mission to remain relevant. Having managed to avoid the 9-5 career path for most of his life, he’s largely supported himself with the help of his affluent family, reality tv stints, and various side grifts. But a not-so-new character on a new grift would soon emerge.

January 7^th, 2025 is a day still very real for the Pacific Palisades, Topanga and Malibu residents affected by a wildfire that unexpectedly ravaged large swaths of their neighbourhoods before it was fully contained three weeks after it first started. Known as the Palisades fire, close to 37 square miles (or 92 square km) of land was burned, 12 people were killed, and 6,837 structures were destroyed, making the Palisades Fire the 10^th deadliest and the third-most destructive California wildfire on record. And Spencer Pratt is one of those statistics. Post-fire, he was most vocal on social media documenting his life in the aftermath of most destructive fire in LA’s history. Seemingly overnight, Pratt’s social media posts went from tranquil clips of feeding hummingbirds in his backyard to posts of an angered and outraged man on his charred lot. And what rose from those ashes wasn’t a phoenix, but rather, an unassuming mayoral candidate. But in order to understand Pratt’s mayoral bid – and like any true villain -- we must first understand his origin story.

A Reality Show Villain is Born 

The year was 2005 and realty shows like Survivor and Laguna Beach exploded in popularity, making tv networks a whole lot of money. And the Fox network was fixing to get their take. Enter in a little ol’ reality show called The Princes of Malibu. Lasting only one season, the show focused on the daily lives of mega famous music producer David Foster and his family. Each episode centred around the antics of his stepsons, Brody and Brandon Jenner, and their best friend Spencer Pratt. The show positioned the boys as lazy bums who stood opposite to the Grammy-producer Foster. Pratt, the self-proclaimed manager to Brody, also garnered producing credits for the show. Pratt often instigated most of the boys’ antics that inevitably left Foster shaking his head in frustration while his wife, Linda Thompson, took a laisse-faire approach. Fox cancelled the show a day after its premier in July 2005 when Linda filed for divorce from Foster.^[1]

Welcome to the Hills

Fast forward to 2007, and the second season of MTV’s juggernaut reality show The Hills was in its second season. The spin-off from another MTV hit reality show, Laguna Beach: The Real OC, The Hills followed Lauren “LC” Conrad and her gal pals as they attempted to make it in LA. Where MTV saw a hit show, Pratt saw an opportunity. Pratt promptly inserted himself into the storyline^[2] as well as in the life of one of its cast members, Heidi Montag, birthing the couple’s nickname “Speidi”. Despite Pratt’s initial supportive role on the show, he quickly catapulted himself into a central part of the storyline that would dominate most of the show.

You know what you did

Although Pratt officially joined The Hills in season 2, it wasn’t until season 3 that the drama took off. Pratt facilitated one of the most iconic moments in reality television from the 2000s; the one where Lauren screamed at her estranged-bestie, Heidi Montag, “YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID!”. Later in the series, it was revealed Pratt not only facilitated that moment, he played a larger role in authoring the rumor behind Conrad’s outburst. For much of the series, Pratt was shrouded in the ‘did-he-or-didn’t-he’ behind the rumor that first appeared on Perez Hilton’s gossip blog. That was until Conrad’s departure closer to the end of the series run, when Pratt admitted he was the source of the rumor.

Episode 1, season 3 of The Hills. (MTV)

The Hills went on to become one of the most profitable shows for MTV for much of the 2000s, garnering its cast high salaries, with Pratt making anywhere between $65,000 per episode to start, and $175,000 per episode at the show’s peak. Pratt, on the other hand, claimed in 2008 on his Twitter/X that he made $175,000 per episode.^[3] However, People Magazine reported at the height of The Hills, Pratt and Montag collectively made $2 million a year between the show, paid appearances, photoshoots, as well as $1 million a year for selling their photos to paparazzi from 2007-2009. Let’s not forget the iconic “upset Heidi” photo from early 2010 which actually turned out to be staged for the paparazzi. The photo featured Montag sitting on a chair “upset” at the commercial flop of her album, Superficial^[4]. This was followed up with another staged photoshoot, this time Montag claimed to be upset at the couple’s divorce.^[5] Pratt would later admit those photos were staged in an attempt to drum up attention and to keep the couple relevant.

Staged photos of an upset Montag and Pratt over the commercial flop of her 2010 album, Superficial. (People Magazine)

It’s All Fun and Games Until the Money Runs Out

As the 2000s rolled along, so did The Hills. The show continued to remain one of the top shows for MTV until 2009, when its protagonist, Lauren Conrad, exited the show at the end of her contract. Despite Pratt’s claim the show’s massive success was attributed to his villain persona, MTV cancelled The Hills at the end of its sixth season the following year. MTV cited the loss of Conrad as the main anchor of the show as well as the loss of its core audience as the cause for the cancellation.

In the wake of The Hills, Pratt continued his side grifts and quest to remain relevant all the while the couple’s spending habits remained the same. “It’s really easy to spend millions of dollars if you’re not careful and you think it’s easy to keep making millions of dollars,” Pratt told Money back 2018. Pratt was referring to the couple blowing through their $10 million net worth and subsequent bankruptcy in 2011. The couple blamed their belief in the Mayan apocalypse^[6]as the cause for their lavish spending habits. “Here’s some advice, definitely do not spend your money thinking asteroids are coming. The world didn’t end,” Pratt has previously explained. Pratt would later claim they overspent trying to keep with up A-list celebrities. “We thought we were Jay Z and Beyoncé,” Pratt told Fox News in May 2026. In a bid to generate money, Pratt claimed Montag had considered posing for Playboy^[7], but reneged on that idea when Pratt’s parents intervened and offered up their summer home in Carpinteria, California for the couple to live in rent-free.

The list of Speidi’s expenditures reads like a litany of luxury expenses: $30,000 shopping sprees, $4,000 on bottles of wine, $15,000-per-night on bodyguards, $1 million on Montag’s designer wardrobe, $2 million on Montag’s failed pop album Superficial^[8], $35,000-per-month on their rental home, $30,000 on Montag’s plastic surgeries, $530,000 on Birkin bags, $300,000 on ammunition, and $1 million on crystals with Pratt spending $15,000 on a crystal for Montag to help with her pain management from her marathon plastic surgeries. That’s not to mention the couple also owed the IRS $2 million in back taxes, owned 6 luxury cars, as well as a failed attempt to purchase a jungle compound with a backpack filled with gold that ended poorly. And then there was the use of private jets and the extravagant gifts to friends. “I would give my friends $15,000 for their birthday. Just cash. I would buy people cars,” claimed Pratt.

Side grifts

Pratt is no stranger when it comes to grifts. In the early 2000s, Pratt attempted to launch his own music career and released a song entitled, I’m a Celebrity. According to a now-deleted tweet from Pratt’s Twitter/X, he billed himself as the “The White Jay-Z”. But Pratt’s short-lived music career took a back seat to a more known source of income: reality tv. It was also around this time, according to Pratt’s 2026 memoir, The Guy You Loved to Hate: Confessions from a Reality TV Villain, he leveraged his then-friendship with Max Winkler^[9] and stole a photo of Max’s then-girlfriend, Mary-Kate Olsen drunk at a party, where Pratt just so happened to be in the background. Pratt sold the image to a photo agency for $50,000, where the photo would end up published in Us Weekly. Pratt claimed on the tv podcast series Virtual Reali-Tea he “…got up to like $90,000,” for the image.

In the wake of The Hills, Speidi continued their reality tv run with appearances on the second season of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here in 2009, followed by season 11 of Celebrity Big Brother UK in 2013, season 2 of Marriage Bootcamp in 2015, and another appearance on Celebrity Big Brother UK season 19 in 2017. In 2013, E!released a special featuring Speidi called After Shock: Heidi and Spencer. which detailed the couple’s life after The Hills. But that’s not all. Aside from receiving credit for a two-second cameo in the 2008 music video I Don’t Care from the band Fall Out Boy, Pratt’s profile on IMDb lists him with writing and directing credits for two short films. Tower 69: Malibu Beach Patrol slated for release in 2010, but the only trace of its existence lies in a press release that announced its trailer and a link to a since-deleted YouTube video. And Recon Challenge in 2013, where the only internet presence of its existence can be found on IMDb.

Aside from those brief appearances, Pratt began selling crystals under the name Pratt Daddy Crystals in the mid-2010s. Largely selling these crystals on its namesake’s website, Pratt claims he sells between 200 and 300 crystals per week, with each one selling between $120 and $300. In 2018, Pratt took this concept to MTV where he co-executive produced the MTV digital series, Spencer Pratt Will Heal You. The show billed itself as “From iconic bad boy of reality TV to the beloved King of Social Media, Spencer Pratt is proof that you can transform, evolve, and thrive. Spencer sets out in search of spiritual practices to heal both himself and his celebrity guests.” If this seems familiar, that’s because those crystals were heavily featured on The Hills: New Beginnings, MTV’s reboot of The Hills that ran from 2019-2021. The reboot featured some of the returning cast from The Hills along with some new faces. But that return to reality tv would be short lived. MTV cancelled the show in 2021 due to declining ratings, manufactured storylines, and its shift away from the aspirational tone the series had in the beginning.

Outside of a few reality stints and side hustles, Pratt spent his time after The Hills by completing a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of Southern California in 2013 -- a decade after he initially enrolled in the school. Pratt also had a resurgence in popularity and relevancy on Snapchat in 2016 by sharing videos of his daily life as well as his obsessions with hummingbirds and crystals. The backyard of the Palisades home the couple purchased for $2.5 million in 2017 became the backdrop for most of the videos he posted - that was until tragedy struck.

Tragedy Strikes

The morning of January 7^th, 2025 started off like any other morning for the residents of the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of LA. But within minutes, that would all change. Unbeknownst to residents, a wildfire allegedly started by John Rinderknecht^[10] in the Santa Monica Mountains, later exploded into the Palisades fire. And from the ashes of the Palisades fire rose not a phoenix, but an angry reality star.

It only took minutes for Pratt’s home to burn down. It also didn’t take Pratt long to go onto social media to show the devastation in the wake of the fire. He also urged people to stream Montag’s 2010 album, Superficial^[11], as the best way to support them through this tragedy. Pratt leveraged this feel-bad story as a marketing tool to reframe it as a feel-good story to announce the re-release of Montag’s album which sprung it to #1 on Apple Music charts. But despite all of this, the couple claimed they’re financially unable to pay to rebuild their home. The couple largely attributes this to sinking almost all of their savings since their 2011 bankruptcy into the down payment for the home. The couple has even gone as far as to claim they haven’t been able to keep up with the monthly mortgage payments.

As for the insurance payout: in an ABC News interview, the couple admitted they didn’t have insurance on their home, stating they were dropped from their policy right before the fires broke out. Since then, they have relocated back to the summer beach home owned by Pratt’s parents. But when asked by reporters if he’s still a Los Angeles resident and eligible to run as mayor, Pratt answered by having an Airstream Trailer lifted onto his charred property.

Despite the barriers Pratt faced with the remnants of his home, Pratt has openly expressed anger – anger at his house burning down, anger at the relief response, but mostly Pratt has channeled his anger towards LA Mayor Karen Bass. Largely blaming Bass for her lack of response to the fires, Pratt’s openly blamed her for his house burning down, mocked her for being outside the country during the fires, and for leaving the neighbouring Santa Ynez reservoir empty. Pratt has also maintained he repeatedly called LAFD and requested a fire truck sent to his neighbourhood but was told none were available. From there, Pratt expanded his anger and his targets. All of Pratt’s targeted blame and anger is reminiscent of the polarizing characterization between him and Conrad that was featured on The Hills -- a mere two decades prior.

(Vanity Fair).

By now it’s pretty clear Pratt has a talent for creating conflict as a means for getting attention, with a documented track record of it throughout the years. From Pratt antagonizing Conrad on The Hills, to publicly sparring with his sister on and off the show, to what now seems like a personal vendetta against Karen Bass. In addition to all of this, Pratt has also been critical of the two FireAid concerts held shortly after the fires that featured an array of musicians and raised $100 million for the victims of the Palisades fire. The money raised was funneled into reputable charities, food banks, and other NGOs, which later became a Republican talking point within Trumps circles framed as money that ‘disappeared’ in the tangled mess of NGOs. Pratt, who is a registered Republican, used this same talk-piece when he made an appearance on the All-In podcast, where he claimed none of the victims of the fire received any of the money raised.

Discussion

What happen to Spencer Pratt and the thousand others affected by the Palisades Fire is nothing short of tragic. But does that tragedy qualify someone to manage the yearly $14 billion-dollar operating budget for LA? Throughout Pratt’s campaign, his messaging is one we’ve all heard before: the government can’t be trusted, not in response to disasters and certainly not when it comes to managing complex social issues.

Throughout much of 2026, Pratt’s message shifted away from the fire response and onto LA’s homelessness and drug crisis. Just like any major city in North America, LA isn’t immune to these complex social issues. Borrowing the same terminology prevalent in Trump circles, Pratt has repeatedly used dehumanizing terminology when referring to those residents, often referring to them as “zombies”. Pratt has also framed himself as the voice speaking for the frustrated LA residents, using the same angered tone he had in the early days the Palisades fire. He’s even made AI-generated campaign videos that depict a dystopian LA riddled with encampments and desolate streets, using statements along the lines of ‘it’s the way democratic politicians want Los Angeles to be like’.

A year after the fire, in true Pratt fashion, he held a press conference off of Sunset Boulevard which attracted approximately 1,000 people. Donning the colours of a traditional villain by wearing all-black clothes and a black hat with “Let Us Burn” printed on it, Pratt’s voice broke and his hands shook as he spoke to the crowd. For a brief moment, Pratt sounded less like the reality tv villain we’ve all come know, and more like someone whose worldly possessions burned down. But before we lament Pratt for being human, let’s really have a look behind the claims he’s making for his campaign.

If Pratt is good at one thing, it’s getting attention

Over the past two decades, Pratt has publicly shown us he’s the same Spencer Pratt we’ve seen on whatever show he was on. Often referring to the current LA Mayor as “Karen Basura” -- Spanish for garbage -- Pratt shows us the one thing he’s really good at: getting attention. And his campaign videos didn’t stray away from that by portraying him as a simple man who’s lost everything and who’s frustrated with how LA is currently managed. Pratt is simply a master of curating sound bites, easily digestible on social media…each one short enough to contain a truth but not the entire story. Very much the same can be said about Pratt’s campaign platform: all talk but lacking any substance.

The May 6^th, 2026 mayoral debate between Spencer Pratt, Karen Bass, and Nithyan Raman became a major source where Pratt’s claims lacked any substance. Often blaming “DEI” initiatives for the failures in the firefighting tactics which caused the fire to burn for as long as it did, Pratt failed to account there’s no evidence of that ever occurring. He’s repeated the claim NGOs, non-profits, and unions were “running this town” and alleged “100 million in fire aid money is missing” but failed to provide any evidence of it. Then there’s Pratt’s suggestion the incompetence of Park Rangers caused the fire to become a disaster, with no evidence to substantiate his claim. The hat Pratt so prominently wore on the one-year anniversary of the Palisades fire literally suggests both LA Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsome let the city burn on purpose. But just like Pratt’s other claims, there’s no evidence to support this allegation.

If you’re beginning to recognize a common theme with Pratt’s claims, then you’re not alone. It’s the same strategy Pratt applied to his reality career over the past two decades: make claims despite the obvious lacking evidence. And it’s a strategy we’ve collectively seen this play out on a larger scale in the form of the current US Presidency. Many of the claims Pratt has made during his campaign so far have largely come from the Trump sphere; from fangirling over Alex Jones, to the framing and blaming of his competitors, to curating sound bites that cater to algorithms, to spewing unsubstantiated claims, to even the cashflow origins of his campaign.

Even the promotional videos Pratt has made throughout his campaign fall nothing short of on-brand for him. His first video featured a business-casual Pratt outside the home of Bass stating, “Karen Bass lives here”, referring to her $3 million dollar home. Pratt positions this in stark contrast to his charred Palisade’s lot^[12] that coincidentally shows an Airstream trailer on it with “Heidiwood” spraypainted on a support wall behind it. This stands almost as a homage to the iconic scene in The Hills where Pratt graffitied the living room wall of the couple’s condo on the show.

Spencer spray paints living room wall of condo he shares with Heidi on Episode 3 Season 3 of The Hills. (MTV)

Although that scene on The Hills was largely fabricated, it’s not a far stretch from the message of his video proclaiming, “I live here”. Another campaign video features Pratt and his family returning to their trailer for the first time, with a camera crew conveniently around to capture the moment. Montag cries as one of their sons finds his shovel in the rubble. The video has all the trappings of an emotionally driven campaign that lacks any factual basis. And then there’s the AI-produced videos that depict Pratt as a superhero while his opponents and other democratic-leaning political figures portrayed as villains.

But just like his apartment on The Hills, Pratt doesn’t actually live there. TMZ first reported Pratt’s actually residing in the posh $1500-per-night Bel Air Hotel. One major question emerges from this: who’s footing the bill? A majority of the money coming into Pratt’s mayoral campaign comes from right-wing Republicans in Texas. Pratt claimed he had no choice but to stay in the swanky hotel due to unnamed forces that would stop at nothing to end his campaign. “I’m at a hotel because these psychopaths are messaging me every day, they are going to kill me.” And in true Pratt-fashion, he made another video. This time, a riff on the theme song from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air sitcom where Pratt rapped about how he ended up at the Bel-Air Hotel.

Pratt’s campaign largely existed on social media platforms, using bots to amplify his videos and algorithms – a common strategy used by many streamers online to boost their manufactured content onto algorithms and For You Feeds. Bot accounts engage with the post through likes and comments, while generating cashflow streams. You can read more about how this works here: The Algorithmic Economy and the Era of Misinformation.

Political Position or Reality Show?

The real question in all of this is: does Spencer Pratt really want the job of mayor, or does he want a reality show more? We know from Pratt himself, his campaign origin story, and his numerous grifts throughout the years are all bids to make money and remain relevant. TMZ reported Pratt has a signed a deal to film a reality show if he won the LA mayoral election with cameras allegedly already following him around filming content. Pratt has denied those rumors. But Pratt’s desire to be on another reality series can be traced back to 2022, when he told Esquire magazine in the wake of The Hills: New Beginnings cancellation, “I want hit show so fucking bad.” At the time of that interview, Pratt was attempting to get another reality show off the ground – that time about cannabis. It appears Pratt will cling onto anything in a bid to remain relevant. As of June 9^th, 2026, a mere week after the LA by-election, Pratt lost to Nithyan Raman and Karen Bass, where both move forward to the election this fall. In response, Pratt publicly conceded a few days later in a video posted to social media where he claimed voter fraud had occurred, which caused his defeat and not the historical fact LA is mostly democratic-leaning and votes mostly by mail.

Conclusion

After two decades of Pratt’s antics to remain relevant, it appears his mayoral bid was nothing more than another attempt at this. Despite the celebrity-backed endorsements Pratt garnered, LA is largely a democratic-leaning city in a largely democratic-leaning state. Instead of electing a loud reality star with algorithmic pizazz, let’s leave governance to those who know how it works and who have experience doing so. Running a city isn’t a reality show and being mayor of the one of the largest cities in America is a very a real job that has very real consequences for its residents. Having raised roughly $3.75 million for his campaign and now with the by-election in the rearview, it appears Pratt’s campaign was nothing more than another side grift to generate money and to stay relevant. And perhaps, this isn’t the last we hear or see from Spencer Pratt – his campaign had all the elements of a compelling reality show.

^[1] Those last two episodes eventually did air but on Fox Reality Channel instead.

^[2] A claim Pratt insists was planted in him by David Foster.

^[3] The only amount Heidi had made per episode that was publicly available claimed she made between $15,000 per episode in the beginning and peaking at $30,000 per episode.

^[4] Heidi’s album, Superficial, sold a whapping 672 units in its first week.

^[5] People Magazine reported Montag filed for divorce from Pratt in July 2010 citing the marriage was for the show.

^[6] The belief the world would end on December 21^st, 2012, as this was the end date of the Mayan calendar.

^[7] In 2007, Heidi did appear in Playboy, albeit semi-clad, according to a 2010 ABC News interview.

^[8] According to Spencer and Heidi, the cause for the album flop was because they forgot to promote it, resulting in the album only selling 672 copies in its first week.

^[9] Son of Henry Winkler, The Fonz on the 1970s hit sitcom, Happy Days.

^[10] As of June 25, 2026, a mistrial was declared, rendering the accused reprimanded in custody until a retrial set to begin on October 19, 2026.

^[11] The same 2011 commercial flop album that had Montag looking “upset” in a photoshoot.

^[12] Pratt took out a $2.5 million mortgage in 2017 for his home in the Palisades.