Despite being a registered Republican, reality TV personality Spencer Pratt says he will be running for mayor of Los Angeles as an independent because “this is not a partisan race.”
The former The Hills star, 42, announced his mayoral candidacy earlier this month on the one-year anniversary of the devastating Pacific Palisades fire that wiped out thousands of homes, including his own and his parents’.
Appearing Wednesday on The View to promote his new memoir, The Guy You Loved to Hate: Confessions from a Reality TV Villain, Pratt explained his interest in running for office while lacking political experience.
“Obviously, I would like to be back in my house, feeding hummingbirds, making silly Snapchats, taking my kids to school,” he said, insisting, “I’m not a political person. If you go back, I was never posting about any politics for the last 20 years.
“But when they burn your house down, and you start looking at the people that I paid my taxes to, and they fail at such a level, we need to be honest and have the truth and transparency,” Pratt added.
“And if you keep lying on these things, nothing’s going to change. So everything I believe in is common sense. I’m not running on anything that my neighbors don’t agree with — and when I say neighbors, I mean all of Los Angeles.”
Pratt — who rose to fame in the early aughts on MTV’s reality show The Hills alongside his wife, Heidi Montag — will challenge incumbent Karen Bass, who is up for reelection this November.
“Business as usual is a death sentence for Los Angeles, and I’m done waiting for someone to take real action. That’s why I am running for mayor,” he said while announcing his campaign at a “They Let Us Burn” rally in the Palisades Village.
“And let me be clear, this just isn’t a campaign, this is a mission, and we are going to expose the system. We are going into every dark corner of LA politics and disinfecting this city with our light. And when we are done, LA is going to be camera-ready again.”
Bass, a Democrat, faced intense scrutiny last year for being out of the country when deadly wildfires struck the city. Several celebrities, including Khloé Kardashian, criticized her response, even labeling her “a joke.”
Pratt and Montag have since sued the city, blaming LA and its municipal water department for the water issues that hampered firefighting efforts, claiming that it ultimately led to the damage to their properties.
