Spencer Pratt's L.A. Mayor Bid Sparks Class War With Hannah Einbinder

The gloves came off in Los Angeles politics this week when reality TV personality Spencer Pratt hit back at Hacks star Hannah Einbinder over her critique of his mayoral campaign. What started as a red-carpet comment at the Critics Choice Association’s Celebration of LGBTQ+ Cinema&Television exploded into a broader argument about wealth, authenticity, and who actually gets a voice in shaping the city.

Einbinder didn’t mince words when she told Variety’s Marc Malkin that voters backing Pratt—a registered Republican endorsed by Donald Trump—were really just wealthy elites masquerading as progressives.“There’s a lot of wealth in this city and I think that there are a lot of people who masquerade as Democrats or people on the left, but really, money is their key issue,”she said. She also reaffirmed her support for incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and Council Member Nithya Raman, framing her choice as resistance against money-driven politics.

Pratt’s response on X cut straight to a core tension: Einbinder, he argued, enjoys the luxury of elite insulation—red carpets, security, distance from the street-level crises ordinary Angelenos face daily.“I’m glad she doesn’t have to suffer the consequences of Karen Bass and Nithya Raman’s failures, but she’s in an elite minority and the rest of us want change,”the 42-year-old wrote on Friday, May 29. The shot landed hard because it inverted Einbinder’s wealth critique, turning it back on her.

The broader context matters here. Pratt announced his L.A. mayoral run on the one-year anniversary of the devastating wildfires that destroyed his home, positioning himself as an“independent community advocate”focused on street-level issues like homelessness and drug addiction. During a Thursday, May 28 appearance on Fox&Friends, he doubled down on an outsider pitch:“People want an outsider who is not a politician, who is just saying the facts. The truth.”His framing sidesteps his MAGA ties and Republican registration entirely, instead centering bread-and-butter problems.

The spat also pulls in voices like Lisa Rinna, who at the American Music Awards on Monday, May 25, questioned whether reality TV stars—evoking Donald Trump directly—should be running for office at all. Einbinder nodded to that skepticism too, saying,“I’m with Lisa Rinna.”Yet the dynamic reveals something thornier: Both Einbinder and Rinna operate from positions of wealth and platform, making their objections to Pratt’s candidacy feel, at least to some ears, like gatekeeping.

Whether Pratt’s campaign gains real traction remains to be seen. But this exchange underscores a real fault line in Los Angeles—between those who believe city problems demand outsider disruption and those convinced that celebrity candidates, regardless of their pitch, are the wrong solution. The irony? Both sides are arguing from positions of relative power, leaving the actual residents struggling with homelessness, addiction, and crime as spectators to a celebrity food fight.