The Democrat establishment was caught flat-footed in Los Angeles by the mayoral campaign of conservative candidate Spencer Pratt, whose local fan base went wild with creative new kinds of video ads. After all, wasn’t Los Angeles a blue city? How could Pratt, a former reality television villain of all things, even have a chance?
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Until he did. Beyond the memorable and clever ads, most of which were done by his supporters at no cost to his campaign, his televised debate performance revealed a poised, authentic, and knowledgable opponent. It didn’t take long after thaat for his polling numbers to take off like a 747 and was suddenly a credible contender.
Which meant a lot of scrambling to catch up to the Spencer innovations, whose admirers and supporters are still dropping ads — good ones — as late as this morning.
Karen Bass dismissed Pratt’s ads as ‘ai’ and ran a string of dull, conventional ads in response, products of consultants and focus groups, the latest string of which are celebrity endorsements — Lisa Rinna, Magic Johnson, Samuel L. Jackson — none of whom live in the disaster of Los Angeles; most or all of whom live in gated communities in places such as Beverly Hills, far from the mayhem brought on by Bass’s leadership, and incidentally, unable to vote for her anyway. Not surprisingly, these ads and their endorsers were dragged on social media for this reason.
DSA member Nithya Raman, an ally of Bass’s, who may be colluding with Bass as an ‘insurance policy’ in case Bass loses, is a little more canny about what’s happening with Pratt. She’s married to a rich Hollywood impresario, prominent writer/produceer Vali Chandrasekaran, and lives in a multimillion-dollar mansion in Silver Lake, one of the more expensive areas in the city.
She can see that Spencer is using his Hollywood-honed skills for storytelling instead of just reciting mindless, contextless statistics, and her husband would easily know the value of storytelling as a Hollywood guy, so this was what came from her campaign, reposted from probably Instagram or TikTok, by a supporter:
Imagine that!
A LA mayoral candidate hiring actual actors for her ads vs using AI slop. pic.twitter.com/0p8ZJkI4V5
— Saad Asad (@realsaadasad) May 26, 2026
Watch it all the way to the end.
It’s about as bad an ad as I’ve ever seen — I had to confirm it was not the work of a political enemy, actually, before I wrote about this.
Stereotypical Jack and Diane figures have a conversation about dating, or more likely, hooking up. Handsome Eric explains that he’s a ‘star quarterback’ in a condescending bid to hook up with homely, nerdy, Montana in a school uniform by the lockers. He tells her she’s ‘smokin’ hot’ which she clearly is not in his quest for easy nookie.
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The girl rebuffs him, first out of concern that people might see them doing the raccoon-in-the-garbage-can thing, as Tom Wolfe put it, and then the quarterback offers her a ride home, his intentions perfectly clear.
The girl rebuffs him again, not because she doesn’t want to be used to satisfy his urges, but because she … loves public transit.
“Ever since I voted for Nithya Raman, public transporation has never been safer or more convenient,” she earnestly replied. She cites more buses, more streetlights, and repaired sidewalks. The quarterback then cities new transit routes, gushing in a stilted reply, as if this were some kind of natural conversation between high schoolers. The girl replies breathily: “Thanks for the offer, but I really would rather take public transit.”
Said no one, ever.
He plays along nicely and wishes her a nice day. Then he throws in a bizarre one: ‘And you know what? When I go to college, I’m gonna major in feminist literature/”
Said no one ever.
The girl coyly suggests they ride transit together, which sounds pretty wretched to any young people who have cars, as many do out of necessity in Los Angeles.
It was as cringe as such ads come, with stilted dialogue and nonbelievable characters, in a syrupy plot-line that won’t reach many battered Angelenos.
It was Nithya’s best effort to counter Spencer ads, by promising to stuff the public into public buses, which of course, the rich backers of DSA have been all in on trying to force Americans into instead of cars for years — through higher taxes, surveillance, higher fees, and potholed streets. Now we are told it is romantic to take the city bus, which Nithya suggests will be all safe and convenient with no bums looking for someone to rob or stab.
That won’t fool Angelenos. Los Angeles is the most car-oriented of America’s cities and that ad won’t go down well. If a political enemy had made this ad, he would consider it a success.
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Image: X video screenshot