Pratt’s Promise

It’s testament to the dysfunction gripping America’s second-largest city that a reality television star — and a registered Republican — with no political resume is emerging as a contender for mayor of Los Angeles. Early voting is under way ahead of the nonpartisan primary on June 2, and a poll finds Spencer Pratt is in second place, backed by 22 percent of likely voters. He trails only the incumbent mayor, Karen Bass, who is supported by some 30 percent. Based on Mr. Pratt’s campaign performance so far, it seems Angelenos could do worse than take a chance on this untested candidate. Under the city’s election rules, any candidate who earns more than 50 percent of the votes in the primary will win the election. Otherwise, the top two vote-getters will face each other on November 3. If the trend identified by Emerson College’s survey holds, November’s vote could be between Mr. Pratt and Ms. Bass. Mr. Pratt appears to have struck a chord at a city that is still reeling from last year’s destructive wildfires. The candidate’s own home was destroyed in the blazes, a point out of which he is making political hay. He pins the blame for the unchecked fires on city leaders. Ms. Bass, for one, was in Ghana when the fires started. “They let my home burn down,” Mr. Pratt avers in a campaign ad. “I know what the consequences of failed leadership are.” Candidate Pratt, running as an independent, excoriates the city’s incumbent Democrats, vowing to “stop these corrupt politicians from destroying our city.” He made a cogent case for improving the quality of life on the city’s streets, where homeless encampments and criminal disorder run rampant. Mr. Pratt calls for a cleanup, including what the AP terms “criminal investigations of nonprofit organizations that serve people living on the streets.”In this respect Mr. Pratt is echoing the compassionate conservatism of, say, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who embraced policies that steered vagrants into treatment or shelters rather than allowing them to live on the streets. “These people do not want a bed,” Mr. Pratt asserted at a candidates’ debate last week. “They want fentanyl or meth.” If Mr. Pratt’s appraisal oversimplifies the case, it points to the need for stricter policing of urban squalor.Mr. Pratt eyes, too, “a forceful stand against antisemitism,” as our Novi Zhukovsky reported, and is “pledging to strengthen protections for Jewish residents” of Los Angeles. The candidate was recently heard calling antisemitism a “mind virus and a sign of a decaying society,” Ms. Zhukovsky added, and he suggested local politicians are too comfortable “with anti-semitic groups and tropes.” He concluded: “That BS stops when I am mayor.”The Pratt agenda, as it were, would entail “directing the Los Angeles Police Department to increase patrols around synagogues and Chabad centers,” while “publicly pressuring university leaders to protect Jewish students from harassment,” and encouraging the Justice Department to pursue civil rights cases in defense of Jewish Angelenos, per Ms. Zhukovsky. “I will never cower to social media trends or bullies,” Mr. Pratt insists.At a time when a leftist mayor like Zohran Mamdani evinces hostility to Israel, Mr. Pratt’s agenda sounds like a step in the right direction. His candidacy is a reminder, too, that effective leadership can yield dramatic improvements in cities’ quality of life, as witnessed at San Francisco, where Mayor Daniel Lurie has a 74 percent approval rating. Quoth Mr. Pratt: “It’s funny, I keep being called a reality star. I’m the only candidate living in reality, too.”

Pratt’s Promise

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