As she was winding down crowds at a union campaign event this weekend, two-time Los Angeles mayoral candidate Karen Bass went with a very specific analogy.
“Shall we cast a reality TV star villain?” I asked rhetorically. “We don’t need villains in this city.”
The reference was of course to Spencer Pratt’s career hills, But it already showed that it was playing the election on his terms: Pratt went viral with an AI ad he ran that showed him as Batman fighting various Democratic figures ruled by a Joker-painted bass. Charlie Curran’s piece was one of several that portrayed Pratt as a Hollywood hero. Elsewhere, he wields a lightsaber as a Jedi fighting Bass, an instrument of the Empire.
Bass was trying to turn the tables on her opponent as the villain he claimed to be fighting. But framing the race in such stark Hollywood terms played into his cinematic narrative of good versus evil in the first place, reminding voters of the silver-screen legend around him (and distracting from his complete lack of political experience).
Pratt has gone from a new candidate to a serious contender, for now, and is polling very close to third place ahead of Tuesday’s primary that will almost certainly determine which of the two candidates advances into November. (No one runs up to 50 percent.)
The most recent Los Angeles Times and UC Berkeley poll showed Pratt at 22 percent, several points below Bass at 26 percent and progressive City Council member Nithya Raman at 25 percent. Bratt’s team relies on silent voting — people who, like Donald Trump’s supporters in 2024, didn’t tell pollsters they were voting for him and went ahead and did it anyway. He also counts no Discomfort with the curse of the meme — what Trump’s opponent learned the hard way in the same election. Just because you have a naughty summer doesn’t mean you have a winning November.
Palisades Crusader also needs to avoid another pitfall: the lack of a serious ground game. Pratt has largely waged war online, drawing comparisons to another (very different) outsider, New York City Mayor Zahran Mamdani. But Mamdani built an almost unprecedentedly elaborate campaign team, traveling to far-flung corners of the city to knock on doors and get votes, while the candidate himself was ubiquitous in the five boroughs. Pratt holds only sporadic events and does not have a strong volunteer team.
About 600,000 Angelenos voted in the 2022 primary. A race that includes three qualified candidates — not to mention two other candidates polling progressive Chen Huang and centrist Adam Miller with a combined 14 percent of the vote — means the margin of victory on Tuesday will almost certainly be small. In fact, the difference between second and third place may be only a few thousand votes. That margin ranked much higher — about 180,000 votes — when Rick Caruso finished second ahead of City Councilman Kevin De Leon in 2022.
It all adds up to the election, so Jenna Maroney can basically decide from her 30 Rocka series written and produced by Raman’s husband Valli Chandrasekaran. The drama does not count the participation of actual celebrities. (Jane Fonda, Samuel L. Jackson, and JJ Abrams for Bass; Mindy Kaling, Adam Scott, and Chelsea Handler for Raman; Joe Rogan, Katharine McPhee, and Paris Hilton for Pratt. Although the kind of anti-elitist campaign Pratt is leading in the election means he could benefit, as he recently pointed out, from celebrities who endorse his opponents.)
Raman has what seem like the right kind of modernist credentials — she’s no bass, but she’s also an experienced politician. For her part, despite an embattled tenure marked by criticism for her angry backlash, Bass can point to the fact that she has never lost an election.
Then again, Pratt could say the same thing.
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If the mayoral race is full of Hollywood drama, the race for governor is draining of it every day. But unlike the city contest, the gubernatorial race — with a string of candidates who haven’t captured the attention of voters or the media — could have an impact on actual Hollywood. After all, the governor can work with the Legislature on the movie tax credit and other policy matters of interest to the entertainment industry.
Three contenders have emerged at the front of the pack: Trump-endorsed conservative Steve Helton, and IATSE and Sierra Club-endorsed Tom Steyer, both of whom are running strongly behind Xavier Becerra, the former California attorney general and Health and Human Services secretary under Biden who has recently ascended.
As in the mayoral race, moderate Democrats are in the lead, progressive Democrats are in second place, and conservative outsiders follow in third place with a chance to get into the field. Becerra now has 28% of the vote in the latest Emerson College poll, confirming he will get one of the top two spots. But the second slot is up for grabs — Steyer has made a late push to lead Hilton by 22 percent to the former British Fox News host’s 21 percent (everyone else is at least ten percentage points out of second place).
So, it’s really a matter of which of the two can grab more of the middle and overpower their opponent.
The risks facing Hollywood are not small. Becerra called for more transparency in data flows and a California-wide entertainment summit to save the company and the people who work for it; It would also redirect some of the tax credit money to departments that lose the most work rather than allowing it to apply anywhere. He does not support eliminating the current $750 million annual limit.
Unlike Becerra, Steyer wants to eliminate the $750 million annual limit while also expanding it to include excess expenses. Hilton has proposed all of that, too, and has also called for a massive increase in the tax break that could range from a cap of 45 percent to 60 percent. He has also extended credits for post-production work.
Hilton, who has generally favored tax breaks, is likely to go all out on the incentives front. But Steyer’s endorsement of IATSE means a huge union in Hollywood believes its policies will actually help entertainment workers. It’s not a race filled with Hollywood drama, but it can come with a lot of Hollywood consequences.
