I have a liberal friend from Los Angeles whom I could imagine narrating one of those viral Spencer Pratt ads that are making national headlines. She’s been affected by all the crises exacerbated under Mayor Karen Bass’s inept rule. She woke up one morning to find a homeless man asleep in her car. Her house was broken into by two men, with even her children’s belongings rifled through. The home she grew up in burned down in the 2025 fires, just like Pratt’s. She told me she hates Karen Bass, especially after Bass refused to answer questions upon returning from Ghana, where she was when the fires started. My friend is also a lifelong Democrat, and you can imagine her story would influence many Democratic voters on the fence about whom to vote for in this mayoral election.
There’s just one small problem: My friend would never agree to appear in a Pratt video. You see, she’s been taught her whole life — from the media, her professors in college, and the movies and shows she watches — that Republicans are evil. Whether it’s a MAGA-aligned congressman or a RINO senator, if they’ve got an R next to their name, it’s unacceptable to vote for them. She did vote for the billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso against Karen Bass in 2022, even though he had been a registered Republican in the past, but only because he chose to run as a Democrat in that election. However, that was before four nightmare years under Bass, which have been worse than even her biggest opponents could have imagined.
Pratt’s new ad is directed to voters in the yoga-mom bloc like my friend who can’t imagine voting for a Republican but who’ve had it with one-party rule in L.A. In the ad, women at a pilates studio confess to one another that they are voting for Pratt. The message at the end: “You are not alone. Vote Spencer Pratt.”
“You are not alone.” Yoga moms, silent majority, and a preference cascade all in one. Whether or not Angelenos elect @spencerpratt as LA mayor, he and his team are revolutionizing politics. pic.twitter.com/l4pwOSmNUH
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) May 17, 2026
Prominent Dems like Nicole Avant — who was Barack Obama’s ambassador to the Bahamas — entertainment mogul Haim Saban, and Universal Music Group Chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge have donated to Pratt. But is there a silent majority of Democrats like the ones in the video who will carry him to victory?
Related: The Choice Facing California Conservatives: Despair or Fight
Veteran political reporter Mark Halperin thinks so. He believes Pratt can win — and has even said at times that he will win — because Los Angeles is a “failed city”:
It's not scientific. There's very limited polling data here, but what I find is a lot of my liberal friends in in Los Angeles are going to support Spencer Pratt, including many who have never voted for a Republican for anything because the status quo is ridiculous. The governance of that city is ridiculous. And you've got the special case of the fires and the governance around the fires. Not every city's dealing with that. But all the other issues about the quality of the schools, the quality of life, the homelessness, the crime, all that is there.
Halperin also praises Pratt’s viral video ads, comparing them to Zohran Mamdani’s successful campaign in New York City. However, Mamdani’s victory should also serve as a cautionary example. Remember that one in three Jewish voters voted for Mamdani despite his antisemitic and anti-Israel views. Bass’s coalition of union, progressive, and urban voters has been taught, much like so many Jewish voters in NYC, to never vote Republican. What’s needed is a permission structure. That's why Halperin thinks the pilates video is so effective:
How do you create a permission structure for a liberal Democrat, which is most of the voters in this election? How do you present a way for them to say it’s okay to vote for a Republican? It’s okay to not vote for Karen Bass. It’s okay to cast the ballot in a way that would say, “Let’s, let’s go for change.” Amongst the many very clever ads that the Pratt campaign or their supporters have made is one that’s geared exactly towards this issue of permission. How do you give them permission in their minds and in their communities to vote for a Republican, a Republican who up until now was most famous for being on a reality show? And the way you do that is to demonstrate that it’s safe to do it. That’s why this ad is so brilliant. This is another one of the many ads generated by AI, which is a whole other lesson about this campaign. It’s about a bunch of, I don’t know if it’s Pilates or yoga, but a bunch of moms who secretly all are gonna vote for Spencer Pratt and share it. ... The tagline, “You are not alone,” is meant to give that permission structure to parents and others in Los Angeles to say it’s okay. You can vote for Spencer Pratt. Nothing bad’s going to happen and something good might happen.
I recently wrote about Dennis Prager’s journey from New York to Los Angeles in 1976 and how he’s vowed to fight against the Dems and their destructive policies. It’s interesting to note that in that very year — 1976 — he was a Democrat and voted for Jimmy Carter. As Prager explained in a 2015 interview:
I was a Democrat. After all, I’m a Jew from New York and went to Columbia. I have every liberal credential. So, you know, when you’re a Jew in New York, you know, there’s sex, male, although that’s now changing, sex to be determined now. I’m serious. In New York, you can change the sex on your birth certificate. But they also had — this is not well-known in Canada or outside of New York and the U.S. — there was a place for party and it was filled in “Democrat.” Because Jew in New York, Democrat.
When did Prager become a Republican? In 1980, when Ronald Reagan ran for president. The former movie star triggered a wave of “Reagan Democrats,” as many loyal Democrats defected to vote for him. Can a former reality TV star do the same thing in Los Angeles in 2026?
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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