Jeffrey Blehar writes for National Review Online about an unlikely development in the Los Angeles mayor’s race.
It was difficult at first to take Spencer Pratt’s outsider candidacy for mayor of Los Angeles seriously, and I think for somewhat obvious reasons. Pratt is a former star of a reality TV show — remember that baby-faced bad boy on MTV’s The Hills, kids? In fact, remember MTV? — and he’s now running for mayor against incumbent incompetent Karen Bass and city councilwoman Nithya Raman. In other words, in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, he is standing as an independent against both the city’s establishment and its far-left activist flank — a heavy lift, to say the least. If the modern era has taught me any one thing, it’s to be skeptical of television celebrity candidates, and that informed my initial approach to Pratt: The city is in desperate trouble and needs reform, but only serious people need apply, please.
That was until I heard him speak. I watched last week’s mayoral debate, and I am now convinced of two things in equal measure: (1) Spencer Pratt is a serious candidate; (2) Spencer Pratt is the only serious candidate in this race, and the only one telling the truth about how dangerous and degraded Los Angeles has become. He is also witty, charmingly frank, and speaks with the deep feeling of a lifelong Californian desperate to save a sinking city. Los Angelenos have the chance to set partisanship aside and vote for sanity on the ballot this June with Pratt, and they should take it.
When we talk about the basket case that California has turned into over the last quarter century, we typically focus on San Francisco. It’s a better “story” for national headlines, certainly a more viscerally resonant one. But Los Angeles has been creaking along with the same tale of decline — on a larger scale and geographical footprint — for decades now. Even as San Francisco has seen a mild rebound in safety and policing under its new mayor, the City of Angels continues its slide downward under Karen Bass.
