Pratts All, Folks

After reality TV star and “Crystal Daddy” Spencer Pratt’s home burned down in the Pacific Palisades fire last year, he sued the city of Los Angeles and the state of California. He traveled to Washington DC to meet with then-attorney general Pam Bondi to investigate LA Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom. One year to the date of the fire, he declared his candidacy to become mayor of Los Angeles.

For some reason, a guy who went broke twice from buying crystals believes he can manage a city with a $15 billion budget. But then again, Donald Trump is president, and he bankrupted casinos…and then added $17 trillion to our national debt.

Pratt is a Republican, and he was endorsed by Donald Trump, though the race was non-partisan. In addition to Pratt and Mayor Bass, there were 12 other candidates, including Nithya Raman.

While a lot of Los Angelinos found Pratt funny and charismatic, he was a fraud. Only 17% of donors to his campaign lived in Los Angeles. He produced a video of himself standing outside of an airstream travel trailer, claiming that's where he was living after the fire, when in reality, he was living in the Hotel Bel-Air. Supporters of his created AI-generated campaign videos for him. Goons like Ted Cruz and Matt Gaetz were huge fans of these videos.

One of Pratt’s policies was to cut funding for nonprofits aimed at reducing homelessness and reallocating that money toward the LAPD. He said as mayor, he would work with the Trump administration on ICE raids and immigration policies in Los Angeles. Pratt promised that if he lost, he would move out of LA.

As we are all aware, vote counting in California is slow, and Pratt was in third place on election night, where he remained for seven days. Because a majority of Californians use mail-in voting, the race was too close to call until yesterday, when Democratic Socialist candidate Nithya Raman overtook him for the second-place spot.

In Los Angeles, a mayoral candidate who gets 50% or more votes wins the election outright. Since no candidate reached that threshold, the top two candidates, Bass and Raman, will advance to the general election in the fall. Pratt is out.

Pratt, like Donald Trump and other MAGAts, does not understand that you don't stop counting votes until you count all the votes. He does not understand that you don't stop counting votes just because a preferred candidate is ahead in the count. Donald Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Elon Musk have claimed that the elections in California were rigged without any evidence. Pratt has insinuated that the election was corrupt and that the additional 43,000 votes that came in for Raman were cast by the homeless, as though homeless people are not citizens with equal rights.

Before Donald Trump had his hissy fit and stormed out of his interview with Meet the Press’ Kristen Welker, she asked him for evidence for his claim that the California elections were rigged. His evidence was “just look at them.” OK. So when you do look at them, there is no evidence of voter fraud or rigging. The only evidence we have is that Republicans are sore losers and liars.

In California, 44% of registered voters are Democrats compared to 25% who are Republicans. In Los Angeles, 51% of registered voters are Democrats compared to 18% who are Republicans. Why Republicans expect to do better there than they have in California in recent years is a mystery. They should be happy that Republican Steve Hilton is in second place in the gubernatorial race and will face Xavier Becerra in the general election.

There are legitimate complaints about counting votes in California. Surely they can come up with a better system that will speed up the process for counting them, but that doesn't mean that the elections are corrupt. It took seven days to count enough ballots to know that the general election for the mayor of Los Angeles will be between two Democrats, Karen Bass and Nithya Raman (go Raman).

It should not take seven days for Spencer Pratt to keep his promise, pack up, and move out of Los Angeles. After all, he claims to be living in a trailer.

Creative note: I misspelled Raman, and I had to go back and correct every single one on these ballots in the cartoon. I blame my proofreader, Laura, for catching it.

Drawn in 30 seconds:

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