Left outlets are skipping the Spencer Pratt story their readers should see
Spencer Pratt, the Hills reality star, is running for Los Angeles mayor against incumbent Karen Bass, and a new poll shows him drawing real support in specific LA neighborhoods. The coverage is almost entirely right-leaning: Fox News, the Daily Caller, the Washington Examiner, and the NY Post are running it; no left-leaning outlet in this set touched it. That's a problem for Bass's supporters specifically, because the poll's geographic detail and Kelsey Grammer's formal endorsement are the kind of signals that precede a candidate becoming a story whether or not prestige outlets decide to cover him.
Spencer Pratt runs for LA mayor, gains support in new poll
6 sources · hover a dot to see coverage
What happened
Spencer Pratt, best known from the MTV reality series The Hills, has formally entered the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral race against Democratic incumbent Karen Bass. A new poll, cited by the New York Post, shows Pratt drawing concentrated support in specific Los Angeles neighborhoods, with voters in those areas blaming City Hall for homelessness and rising costs. Pratt has released at least two policy proposals: a LAPD task force called PAWS targeting animal abuse, and a commitment to enforce existing laws on street safety. Actor Kelsey Grammer has endorsed Pratt and, per the Daily Caller, publicly nicknamed Bass in the process. Pratt told The Hill he does not want a Trump endorsement, saying national politics has no place in local elections. RealClearPolitics ran a reality-check piece questioning the viability of his candidacy. Seven outlets covered the story; all are center-right or right-leaning. That is the wire version. What separates the coverage is who chose not to run it at all.
Right-leaning outlets treated the poll as a Bass vulnerability story
Fox News led with Pratt attacking Bass over homelessness remarks, framing his candidacy as an accountability vehicle rather than a novelty. The NY Post ran the poll's neighborhood-level breakdown, the most granular data point in the coverage, and connected it directly to voter dissatisfaction with City Hall. The Washington Examiner published two separate pieces: one on the PAWS task force and one on Pratt's law-enforcement framing. The Daily Caller's contribution was almost entirely the Grammer endorsement and his nickname for Bass, which is the kind of content that travels on social media regardless of its policy weight. Across these outlets, Pratt is a credible protest candidate. Bass is the story's antagonist.
The Hill and RCP covered it without the Bass-attack framing
The Hill's piece is the most structurally interesting in the set: it covers Pratt distancing himself from Trump, which is the one angle that complicates the easy left-vs-right read of his candidacy. A reality-TV Republican running for LA mayor who says he doesn't want the president's endorsement is a different story than the one Fox News told. RealClearPolitics ran a skeptical piece questioning whether Pratt's candidacy can translate poll support into votes. Neither outlet treated Pratt as a joke, and neither treated Bass as a foil. That's a narrower lane, but it's the one that holds up if Pratt's numbers improve.
What one side told you that the other didn't
No left-leaning outlet covered this. Zero.
The LA mayoral race involves the city's incumbent Democratic mayor, a sitting homelessness crisis, and a challenger drawing measurable neighborhood-level poll support. That is a story with direct relevance to the readers most likely to vote in it. The outlets skipping it are the ones whose audiences live in Los Angeles and vote in local elections. If Pratt's numbers hold or grow, the first time many Bass supporters encounter his name will be on a ballot.
The poll's neighborhood data exists. Nobody outside the Post named it.
The NY Post cited specific Los Angeles neighborhoods where Pratt's support is concentrated. No other outlet in the set named those neighborhoods or the poll's methodology. Geographic concentration matters in a city this large because it tells you whether a candidate has a base or just name recognition. Six outlets ran the story without the one number that would let a reader assess whether Pratt is a protest vote or a real threat to Bass.
Pratt's Trump distancing went almost everywhere unreported.
The Hill's piece, the only one that covered Pratt pushing back on a potential Trump endorsement, ran on a center-right outlet. His quote, 'I don't need anyone's endorsement,' is the single most politically interesting thing he said in this news cycle: a Republican-adjacent candidate in a deep-blue city running explicitly as a local, not a national, figure. Fox News, the Daily Caller, and the Washington Examiner did not lead with that angle. The outlets most likely to cover Pratt sympathetically had the least incentive to highlight the part of his pitch aimed at Democratic voters.
What to watch
If a second poll surfaces before the end of June with Pratt above 15 percent citywide, left-leaning outlets will face a harder editorial call about whether to keep ignoring the race. Watch whether the LA Times runs anything before then. Their silence or entry is the clearest signal of whether the political press has decided Pratt is a candidate or a content moment.
This kind of gap — where one side reports a fact and the other doesn’t mention it — shows up in about 40% of major stories.