Karen Bass advances to runoff for LA mayor with Spencer Pratt trailing in 2nd place

Results are not yet fully tallied from Tuesday night's mayoral race in Los Angeles, but incumbent Mayor Karen Bass secured a spot in a runoff election against a second-place challenger. Outsider GOP candidate Spencer Pratt, whose home was destroyed in the Palisades Fire, and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman are vying for that spot, but Pratt leads Raman in current counts by 8 points.

With 63% of votes counted, Bass held onto 34.8% of the voting populace, with Pratt coming in at a close 30.4% and Raman trailing with 22.3%. Those percentages represent just shy of 500,000 people. The runoff will be in November.

Once the second-place vote-getter is determined, the two will advance to a runoff election. Any of the three candidates could have taken home a victory if they had won 51% of the vote, but all of them were woefully short with no chance to gain it as of Tuesday night's last count. Bass took home 54.8% of the vote when she first attained the mayoralty in 2022.

The Los Angeles mayoral primary has been contentious, with Raman and Bass facing off against newcomer outsider Republican Spencer Pratt. Pratt ran a non-traditional campaign, using AI-generated ads to expose the flaws in his opponents' records. Both Democrats were campaigning on fixing things they have been unable to fix during their time in office.

Prior to launching what became a viral campaign, Pratt was best known for his reality TV show character in "The Hills." Raman attacked Bass from the left, with critics saying that she was the "Mamdani of LA" in the mayoral race. Through his campaign, Pratt released ads arguing for a safer LA with law and order, many of them being created with AI. In one instance, his ad depicted Bass as Darth Vader in Star Wars with him as Luke Skywalker.

Another ad was a spoof of the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" where he leaned into a report from TMZ that accused him of living in the hotel Bel-Air instead of in a trailer at his home address where his house had burned down.

The ad called out TMZ founder Harvey Levin, who during Pratt's campaign had said that he thought Pratt would win the primary but lose in the general election.

Bass, as well as Raman, attacked Pratt over him having little experience in politics during the campaign and was critical of his use of AI ad videos.

Raman also attacked Pratt after President Donald Trump backed the candidate, although Pratt later said he did not need Trump's endorsement in order to win the race.