How Spencer Pratt Went From Villain To Hero

It feels like every day there’s a new viral campaign video from Los Angeles mayoral hopeful Spencer Pratt. And every day it’s hard to reconcile that this is the same slime-ball we used to despise on “The Hills.”

For just over four years — from 2006-2010 — we watched Pratt live out his mid-20s in front of an MTV camera, and the angle was typically less than flattering. Engaged at the time to his now wife Heidi Montag, Pratt appeared to manipulate and charm his way through most situations — often coming off like a used-car salesman.

In more recent interviews, Pratt has said that the “villain” persona was just that: a persona, put on almost in its entirety to drive ratings. During a Sirius XM interview with host Julia Cunningham in 2025, Pratt explained that he’d received a simple piece of advice from record producer David Foster on the set of “The Princes of Malibu.”

“He was like, ‘You need to be the Simon Cowell of reality TV,’ and I didn’t even watch ‘American Idol.’ I didn’t even know who Simon Cowell was. I was like, ‘What does that mean?’ … He’s like, ‘Be the bad guy. Be the villain,'” Pratt explained.

“What [David] didn’t explain to me, though, why Simon Cowell was able to get away with what he did, is [that] it was grounded in, ‘I’m trying to tell you you’re not talented because it’s just the truth,’” Pratt continued. “The problem with me just being blunt and doing whatever producers wanted and making the game is [that] the audience doesn’t see any — there’s no, ‘He’s just telling it how it is.’ It was just like, ‘Oh, he’s a monster.'”

Still, he leaned into the persona and even marketed it, emblazoning his personal website with the tagline, “Feel free to hate on me … daily!”

And we did.

But these days, Pratt says the only people who really hate him are the socialists and the communists — most of whom are currently rallying to keep him from becoming the next mayor of Los Angeles. And the more he talks, the harder it is for even those of us who grew up seeing him as the “villain” to keep seeing him that way.

But in a way, it makes sense — we’re far from the same person we were 20 years ago, too. Fans of the show remember Spencer as being incredibly full of himself. That’s still true, but when it comes to running for office, his overinflated ego really comes in handy. Plus, he’s now a husband and a father watching his beloved town suffer the worst aspects of leftist policies. It’s far easier to be sympathetic now than when “The Hills” was first broadcast.

But then came the real wrinkle: Pratt lost his home in the deadly Palisades fire in early 2025. His mother lost the house he’d grown up in. Neighbors and friends burned to death in their beds.

Prior to the fires, Pratt hadn’t publicly expressed interest in politics — despite having earned his political science degree from USC in 2013 — and had the disaster never happened, he probably would have been content to sell crystals online forever. But the fire forced Pratt to step out of his blissful post-reality star haze, look around, and finally say what city dwellers have been thinking for years: “What the hell are we doing here?”

The Trump/Pratt comparisons are reasonable. While the former MTV drama series player doesn’t quite have the same charisma as Trump, he does have that everyman quality, a penchant for showmanship, and a willingness to say what everyone is thinking without sugarcoating it in politically correct euphemisms. 

Pratt’s ads, even the AI-generated ones that he has shared, work because they reflect the real conversations people are having about the state of the country. They tap into people’s worst fears about the future, giving a voice to what feels like common sense. It’s easy to nod along, a sense of righteous anger growing, wondering why homeless addicts are permitted to run the cities while law-abiding citizens cower in their homes. 

Instead of using polished talking points, Pratt speaks off the cuff and just says the thing out loud that no one expects him to say. You know, like Trump does.

When leftist City Council member Nithya Raman trotted out tired lines about solving homelessness, Pratt went in for the kill. 

“I will go below the Harbor Freeway tomorrow with her, and we can find some of these people she’s going to offer treatment for. She’s going to get stabbed in the neck,” he said during the debate that 89% of viewers said he won in a landslide. “These people do not want a bed. They want fentanyl or super meth.”

These ads paint Pratt as a literal superhero and far-Left politicians like Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass as the supervillains. Everyone’s favorite failed presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, even pops up because she helped make California awful, too. Pratt isn’t pretending to be some political genius, but is rather a stand-in for what would happen if you, or I, or some other regular person were suddenly dropped into office and given the chance to fix things. 

Among a crowded field of hardcore leftists, Pratt isn’t leaning into politics to make his case. Instead, he’s counting on people ignoring party lines in favor of common sense. This is the double-edged sword of living in a city that’s so far gone — he sounds a bit radical when he makes statements that, in any other city, would sound sane. 

What’s even funnier is how ads made to oppose Pratt wind up making him look better. One ad sponsored by L.A. Unions Opposed to Spencer Pratt for Mayor accused him of “[opposing] using taxpayer money to build brand new houses for our unhoused neighbors, saying it’s time for the homeless to get help or get out. Pratt thinks L.A. needs thousands more police officers rather than more social workers.”

Well, yes. And that’s why his campaign is working. Pratt responded to the ad by saying, “Wait. Unions are mad that I want firefighters and city workers to get better pay and safer working conditions? What are they actually … for?”

It’s a question being asked by Angelenos and beyond, and while the polls show that Pratt is still a long shot rather than a foregone conclusion, it’s tempting to believe that the polls are wrong.