Category: Spencer pratt
BURN NOTICE: ‘Hills’ heel Spencer Pratt to run for Los Angeles mayor
“It’s official. I’m running for Mayor of LA.”
After a year of calling out Democrat leadership for its handling of last year’s devastating Los Angeles wildfires, Spencer Pratt is offering Angelenos an alternative: himself.
Pratt, who shot to fame playing a villainous version of himself on hit MTV reality show “The Hills,” lost the Pacific Palisades house he shared with wife (and former castmate) Heidi Montag and their children in the January 7, 2025, conflagration. Since then, he has emerged as one of the most prominent critics of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom, both Democrats.
‘Gavin Newsom and his state park policies actually literally dictated that we let the Palisades burn.’
Fired up
The Palisades native has accused Bass of bungling the response to the deadly blaze, which eventually spread to 23,448 acres, costing 12 lives and destroying almost 6,000 homes.
Pratt has also claimed that Newsom’s inadequate brush-clearance policy helped cause what was otherwise a preventable disaster.
Pratt kicked off his mayoral campaign on Wednesday with an impassioned speech to at least 1,000 attendees.
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“It’s official. I’m running for Mayor of LA,” Pratt announced in a post sharing video of the speech. “I’ve waited a whole year for someone to step up and challenge Karen Bass, but I saw no fighters. Guess I’m gonna have to do this myself. Let’s make LA camera ready again!”
Brush-off
Pratt addressed the enthusiastic crowd with a mixture of defiance and sorrow.
“Standing here one year later, I have to tell you the most heartbreaking part of the past year wasn’t being displaced or losing everything I own. It was the realization that all of this was preventable,” he explained, fighting back tears.
The 42-year-old continued, “The state and local leaders let us burn. Gavin Newsom and the state of California let brush grow wild … no wildfire maintenance.”
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Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage
Policy pinch
Like many of the would-be constituents in attendance, Pratt faced the fires without standard homeowners’ insurance, after insurers declined to renew policies for thousands of homes in the Palisades, Altadena, and other designated fire-prone areas in recent years. Most notably, State Farm announced in 2024 that it would discontinue coverage for roughly 72,000 houses and apartments statewide.
Pratt’s sole coverage came from the state’s supplementary California FAIR Plan, which he has previously said did not provide enough money to rebuild.
In his speech, Pratt laid the blame squarely on Newsom, who he said “created an insurance market so hostile that every major carrier stopped writing policies” and thereby “dictated that we let the Palisades burn.”
The candidate also had harsh words for the Los Angeles Fire Department, which he blamed for “fail[ing] to deploy sufficient firefighters, fire engines, and firefighting resources, whether it be due to lack of budget, lack of knowledge, or simply DEI.”
Pratt concluded by touting his showbiz experience as something that made him uniquely attuned to the workings of power in the city. Singling out “NGOs, nonprofits, and unions,” he vowed to make it his “mission” to dismantle what he labeled a “machine designed to protect the people at the top.”
