Spencer Pratt tore into the Los Angeles Times after the outlet questioned his eligibility to run for mayor because his home burned down in the Palisades fire.
“They want to try to write a hit piece about me, about my residency, because I’ve had my family sheltered up in my dad’s rental home in [Santa Barbara] and they want to attack me for not living in the Palisades while running for mayor?” Pratt said.
“Hey, brain surgeon! My house burned down. You guys let my entire neighborhood burn down, remember?” he added.
“The burned out lot I own in the Palisades is still my legal residence where we are trying to rebuild in the face of Karen Basura (Bass) and Nithya Raman and our broken city leadership putting up every hurdle imaginable to make it harder and harder for us to rebuild.”
Creepy LA Times “journalist” has been phone-stalking & harassing my sister, my wife, my MOM, and even my favorite burrito restaurant trying to dox where my kids sleep and go to school, all because I pulled ahead of Nithya Raman in the polls, and she sent her lapdog to do her… pic.twitter.com/cwWdMqtFKX
— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) April 6, 2026
The Los Angeles Times stood by its reporting after raising questions tied to Pratt’s temporary move to Santa Barbara County following the fire.
“The Times learned that Mr. Pratt was living in Carpinteria, and contacted him and those around him for comment. We stand by our story and the reporting of our journalists,” the paper said in a statement.
Pratt accused the outlet of crossing a line and going after his family while trying to undercut his campaign.
“Creepy LA Times ‘journalist’ has been phone-stalking & harassing my sister, my wife, my MOM, and even my favorite burrito restaurant trying to dox where my kids sleep and go to school, all because I pulled ahead of Nithya Raman in the polls, and she sent her lapdog to do her dirty work,” Pratt wrote on X.
“That’s what they call ‘journalism’ at the LA Times, folks!” he added. “They’re scared of our campaign. We’re gonna take back our city, and they know they can’t stop us.”
Pratt tied the timing of the story to polling that showed movement in the race.
Pratt said the report came after a survey showed him climbing into second place behind incumbent mayor Karen Bass.
A recent poll from UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs placed Bass at 25 percent support, with Pratt at 11 percent and Nithya Raman close behind at 9 percent.
Rae Chen Huang and Adam Miller each drew 3 percent, while nine percent backed other candidates.
Forty percent of respondents remained undecided, leaving a large share of the electorate still in play.
Pratt framed that bloc as an opening rather than uncertainty.
“To me, that’s not undecided. They know they don’t want Karen Bass, they’re just waiting to hear the message that I’m going to be sharing with them, the common sense change to Los Angeles,” he told Fox 11.
“I have many weeks to get to those people, tell them, we’re done with this way of LA I am stopping this.”
His campaign launched in January after the wildfire destroyed his home, a loss he has repeatedly tied to failures by city leadership.
He has since filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles, blaming the city and its water department for failures that hampered firefighting efforts.
The complaint argues those issues directly contributed to the destruction of properties, including his own.
Pratt has kept that argument front and center, using it to frame his run as something bigger than a typical campaign.
“This just isn’t a campaign, this is a mission. And we are going to expose the system,” he told a crowd at a fire anniversary rally titled “They Let Us Burn!”
“I was born here, went to school at USC,” he added. “I bleed Dodger blue. This is my city, and I’m taking it back.”
He has also gone after Bass directly, often using the nickname “Karen Basura,” a Spanish term meaning trash or garbage.
He expanded those attacks in a television interview when asked about his past on reality TV.
ALERT: LA mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt fires back against Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass after a reporter asked him if being a “reality TV star” is hurtful for his campaign.
“That was from 20 years ago. If we look at what Karen Bass was doing 20 years ago, she was in Cuba… pic.twitter.com/nly3Blfnfr
— E X X ➠A L E R T S (@ExxAlerts) March 27, 2026
“The reality, pun intended, is that was from 20 years ago,” Pratt said. “And if we look at what Karen Bass was doing 20 years ago, she was in Cuba learning how to make bombs with the people that would then go bomb Capitol Hill.”
“I’m pretty proud of what I was doing at 20 on reality television,” he continued.
“Even though it was, you know, I may not have been the most likable character, it was still TV versus trying to destroy America and going to Cuba 20 times and praising Fidel Castro. So against my opponent, my background’s pretty strong.”
Bass has acknowledged visiting Cuba multiple times in the 1970s and was tied to the Venceremos Brigade, a pro-Castro group that organized trips for American activists.
Pratt has used that history as a recurring line of attack as he tries to draw a sharper contrast between himself and the incumbent.
He has also targeted Raman, describing her and Bass as part of the same political bloc responsible for the city’s current condition.
“You see schemers like Raman and Basura (Bass) and their media sickos can’t fathom that I didn’t have some grand scheme to run for mayor like these slimy career politicians,” Pratt said.
“I didn’t plan any of this. I wasn’t thinking, ‘I really need to make sure I stay in the zip code in case I run for mayor,'” he explained.
“I was just trying to find the safest place to go where I could try and give my kids the most normal life that I could after these clowns nearly destroyed our life as we knew it.”
He also pointed to the steps he took to remain tied to the Palisades property despite losing the home.
Pratt said he used a Small Business Administration disaster loan to purchase an Airstream trailer, which was placed on his burned lot so he could live there while rebuilding.
That detail became central to his argument that his residency never changed, even as his family temporarily relocated.
The dispute over where he lives now sits alongside a wider fight over how the fire was handled and who is responsible for the fallout.
Pratt has made clear he intends to keep pressing that case as the race moves forward.
“We’re gonna take back our city, and they know they can’t stop us.”