The last person California Democrats expected to keep them up at night is Spencer Pratt. Yet here we are.
The former reality television personality-turned-independent mayoral candidate has spent the past several weeks doing something that Los Angeles's political establishment convinced itself was impossible: making incumbent Mayor Karen Bass look vulnerable.
Conventional wisdom held that a candidate like Pratt, a former television personality with no governing experience, running as an independent in a deep-blue city, had no realistic path to victory. The conventional wisdom was wrong, or at a minimum, it failed to account for how much patience voters had actually lost with the Democratic Party's incompetence.
At some point, even reliable Democratic constituencies reach a limit for how much they can tolerate. Bass may be finding out precisely where that limit sits.
Between April 19 and May 15, Pratt's campaign has raised roughly $2.7 million. Over that same stretch, Bass pulled in just $282,000. Bass has been raising money since 2024, and her total haul since then is approximately $2.8 million. Pratt nearly matched it in less than a month.
The two candidates are now separated by less than $100,000 in cash on hand, with Pratt sitting on roughly $1.42 million and Bass on approximately $1.32 million.
The money story alone would be enough to rattle the machine. The polls are another story. Pratt has been performing well in the polls, with Bass only leading by single digits in recent surveys, which means Pratt could advance to a runoff with Bass.
In a city where Democratic registration is so overwhelming that Republican candidates don't bother showing up on general election ballots, this is a huge red flag for the Bass campaign.
The Democrat establishment has heard the message loud and clear and is starting to panic. On Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an endorsement of Bass - just five days before the primary.
"The work Karen Bass is doing in Los Angeles is making our entire state stronger, with an 18% decline in homelessness while it grew nationally, historic drops in violent crime, boosting film production in L.A., and protecting our communities against ICE. She has my full support for reelection," Newsom said in a statement.
Whatever the merits of the endorsement's substance, its timing speaks for itself. It reeks of desperation.
If no candidate receives a majority on the June 2nd election, a runoff election will be held on November 3rd. Newsom, making an endorsement in the race's final days, is clearly hoping to boost Bass and avoid a runoff.
Pratt was unimpressed by Newsom's 11th-hour endorsement. He responded by calling Newsom and Bass "alleged criminal partners," tying them together through their shared record on the catastrophic January wildfires and the city's homelessness crisis.
"It's not shocking because their alleged criminal partners, not only did they work together in their negligence and burning down 7,000 houses and 12 people alive, but they're both complicit in laundering, what, 24 billion dollars to actually increase homelessness," Pratt said.
He went further, attacking the homelessness statistics Newsom cited and accusing both Newsom and Bass of making them up.
"Those are not real numbers," Pratt insisted. "Anybody with eyeballs in the state of California or Los Angeles knows that there has not been a reduction in one homeless person. Actually, there's been an increase of naked drug addict zombies in front of every kid's playground, every kid's school, every coffee shop."
"They both should be in jail together," he added.
A runoff now appears likely, and Pratt heads into it with momentum, money, and a message that is clearly resonating.
November represents more than a municipal race. It's a test of whether California's progressive one-party model can withstand sustained confrontation with its own results.
The Democrat establishment has reason to worry. The polls and the fundraising say so.