Spencer Pratt, Karen Bass, and Why California Politicians Suddenly Love Hollywood

0:04This episode of The Town is brought to you by Starz's Outlander. Everything has led to this. The final chapter of the time-traveling drama and cultural phenomenon starring Sam Heughan and Catriona Balfe is only on Starz. Vogue declares Outlander one of television's greatest love stories, and the rap raves Balfe and Heughan have perfected this on-screen relationship. Industry voters can access all episodes at starsfyc.com. This episode is brought to you by Netflix, presenting The Diplomat. The drama series returns with tested alliances, new characters, and potentially catastrophic consequences.

0:41Starring Actor Award winner Kerry Russell, Allison Janney, Rufus Sewell, and Bradley Whitford. AFI raves The Diplomat ascends to the highest office in television in its third term and praises it as TV program of the year. With outstanding writing from Deborah Kahn, Decider calls it a masterclass in storytelling. The Diplomat, for your Emmy Awards consideration. It is Thursday, May 21st. As long as I've been covering the entertainment business, the politics of Hollywood have been almost totally separate from the politics of the physical place where Hollywood is located. Many of the big industry players, most of them Democrats, and a lot of them transplants from elsewhere.

1:19They raise money for Senate campaigns in Michigan or Pennsylvania, but largely ignore state and local races here in L.A. And for the most part, the feeling has been mutual. California politicians have always taken Hollywood as a job creator for granted. State production incentives, which have become so important in the business, have typically hit a wall in the California legislature. And local politicians have made it complicated and onerous and expensive to shoot in the city, contributing to the exodus of jobs over the past few years. But that's all kind of changing now. If you listen to the candidates, especially those running for governor and mayor of LA.

1:54They love Hollywood now. Each of the major contenders for governor wants to increase state production incentives, which were already raised to$750 million per year by Governor Newsom. All the major candidates for mayor in LA are talking about bringing back these Hollywood jobs. Of course, they were largely silent as the jobs left in the first place. But there's definitely a feeling that Hollywood is a winning political issue now. Just yesterday, AOTC, the powerful below-the-line union, they endorsed Karen Bass, the current L.A. mayor. And the Teamsters have also backed her. And then there's Donald Trump, who endorsed Spencer Pratt, the reality show villain turned influencer, turned mayor candidate.

2:30Not sure Pratt really wanted that one, but he's got it. So how did this political shift happen? Is it just that the industry has been hit so hard, or is it something else going on? Today, I've got Peter Hamby here to discuss. He's a political writer at Puck based in L.A., and he's also the host of the podcast The Powers That Be, and the very popular Good Luck America show on Snapchat. We're going to have a very civilized and no BS discussion of Hollywood and politics, the governor and mayor's races from the industry's perspective, and of course, the Spencer Pratt question. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town.

3:05Okay, we are here with Peter Hamby, writer at Puck, where I work, a video star at Snapchat. What else am I missing here? Man about town, the mayor of Venice Beach. The mayor of Venice, former CNN. Former CNN guy, yes. Reds fan, unlike you. Yes, you are a Reds fan. My condolences. So thank you for coming on because we don't do a lot of politics on this show, but I feel like it has been shoved in our faces now for a few weeks. It is hilarious to me that all of these candidates for governor and for mayor of L.A. all of a sudden discovered that Hollywood is a thing and that maybe it could use some help from the government because it's in kind of a bad place right now.

3:53And all of these candidates have fallen over themselves to declare themselves allies of the entertainment industry. How did this happen? Because for years, this was an industry that was sort of foreign even to the leaders of LA. There wasn't a lot of interaction. a lot of the big industry power players that donated to candidates they would donate to national races they didn't really pay much attention to state and local races and all of sudden now you can't turn on the tv in la without seeing an ad from some politician promising to fix hollywood yeah i mean well first of all i should say that i mean this isn't something that gavin newsome ignored i should i want to point out gavin newsome two years ago expanded the state tax credit for film and tv production you know with an eye on the numbers that true but he did that after the fires and after the strikes and after it got to a place where he couldn't ignore it and you and i i you talk to him all the time but i talked to him at the puck event in dc and he was describing it as always a challenge to get anything pro-Hollywood through the state legislature because they just don't care.

5:12And most, you know, LA is the biggest constituency, but most of the people in the state legislature are outside of Southern California. So they're not going to care about it, but all of a sudden they do. So look, I think that Newsom was hip to the fact that as you cover all this time on the pod on this town that the numbers are bad. I mean, people are going not just to New York and Georgia, but now New Jersey, all these other states. So I think he just became aware of the fact, Governor Newsom, that this was happening pretty recently. I think that the decline, you tell me, Matt, I think film and TV production peaked what year, 2022?

5:48And it's been downhill ever since? Yeah. And I think the difference maker is when you start to look at the numbers and you see that 57 ,000 jobs have been lost in the past four years. And it's starting to bleed into other aspects of the economy, the restaurant economy and the services economy. And even, you know, a lot of the, the tertiary ancillary businesses around entertainment, that's when you start to see the politicians get involved because it's no longer the, you know, the Beverly Hills liberals or the West Side liberals that are not necessarily the focus, but it's regular people. And it's always been regular people, but that was not the impression in government.

6:32So what are the specific candidates talking about? Because there's a lot of things on the table now. There's everything from a push to reduce or eliminate the cap on production incentives to there's you know a separate bill that is moving forward to add an incentive for below the line or post-production to bring that back to the state what are the individual candidates talking about let's go first to governor and then we'll get into the la mayor i'm except more excited to talk about the mayor's race i know i know but let's talk about the governors because this is the one that actually matters this the la mayor like yes they can do things to cut red tape and everything.

7:14But what really matters is whether California is going to become competitive for production incentives. So what are the candidates saying? It really all comes back to that tax credit. Most candidates want to maintain it. There is some differential between all of the different candidates running for office. And again, these are mostly Democrats in this jungle primary. Steve Hilton is probably going to advance because Trump has endorsed him on the Republican side. But he's been very aggressive. He's talking about like doubling or eliminating the cap. He wants the most aggressive, but I don't think he totally realizes how difficult that would be with the state legislature.

7:52The other one is Javier Becerra, who jumped in this race and kind of didn't have a ton of detailed policy plans. But I spoke to his policy team the other day, and they gave me some insight into what's different from the other candidates, because this is, again, important because he might actually become the governor. Yeah, he has the best chance of winning. Yes, a lot of Gavin Newsom's people are also helping Javier Becerra. His plan also, you know, focuses on keeping the tax credit. He said he would be a little more mindful of the budget and keep, sorry, his team said this at least, that they would be mindful of the budget and revisiting how it affects the budget, unlike Mahan, unlike Villaraigosa.

8:31One thing that they said differentiates Becerra's ideas around helping the biz is he would wants to create a lot of transparency for how shows perform in the streaming world so that would basically help with residuals and other payments for workers oh that's a big topic we talk about that a lot on the show he essentially wants there to be more transparency and data consumption where talent would get access to more of what their work is generating and which is a great thing but i don't know how he would force that you'd have to enact some kind of a law that you don't get access to certain things unless you reveal it or something like that um seems kind of difficult but what is he saying is is becerra saying anything about the cap on production incentives because that's the big issue with becerra again the front democratic front runner who if you put betting money on calci right now is probably going to be the governor they're pretty vague about what he's going to do they say that they're going to keep an eye on how it's going to impact the economy and good california paying jobs and the budget mayhane and via ragosa are saying no cap like let's just figure it out later katie porter uh is saying this kind of the same thing as becerra that they want to keep keep the cap at 750 uh but you know she's been endorsed by the teamsters by the way i should say that they work on a lot of sets around town here.

9:58So look, Matt, this is all, the bottom line is this is all very, very vague. And I think a lot of these candidates, Democrats and Republicans, have come around to the idea that Hollywood, and this is sort of a Trump take, that Hollywood isn't just something that's important for California, it's important for the country. Like, it is a very symbolic thing. And all these candidates, including Becerra and the folks I talked to on his campaign the other day, said that he's one of the only guys with experience in Washington. Not that he's going to have an open door in the Trump administration, which, by the way, will be over in two years, but that he knows how the levers of power work.

10:37You know, people in the Biden administration might disagree with that from his time as HHS secretary. Some have said that publicly. But, you know, the candidates who do have experience in Washington are saying that it's important to have somebody who can go to DC, shake some hands, knows whose office is where, knows which budget is where, et cetera, and that they can sort of keep that relationship going. All right. Well, it's all frustrating. This is why we don't do politics that much on the show, because there's a lot of platitudes, not a lot of specifics. This episode is brought to you by Holiday Inn by IHG.

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11:46From acclaimed Reservation Dogs creator Sterling Harjo, the series stars five-time Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke as Lee Raybon, a self-described Tulsa trussorian whose fixation on the truth tends to create more problems than it solves. This gloriously off-kilter noir is an AFI television program of the year and one of 2025's most critically acclaimed shows. The Lowdown is available for your Emmy consideration on Hulu and Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business and even this podcast. That's why I trust Spectrum Business.

12:25They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 US-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum Business. So visit spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Karen Bass, the mayor who was roundly criticized for being out of town during the LA fires. And from my vantage point, hasn't really done much to help the industry during her time. She's now cutting fees by 20 % at Griffith Observatory and things like that. That don't seem like a lot of benefit there.

13:06she was not really a factor in helping to get the writers guild and sag after strikes settled when that was a thing she was mayor then let's step back a little bit so in the mayor's race you have the incumbent and i agree with you karen bass has been an extremely poor communicator when she came back to los angeles in 2022 from congress i think this was even one of her tv ads she was She said, Los Angeles is on fire and I'm here to save it. Well, you know, Los Angeles then was actually on fire and she was in Ghana. Her approval rating is in the pits. I think it's in the 30s right now. She might emerge after being left for dead politically after the fires as one of the luckiest candidates in recent memory because we have this open primary and she's got two challengers, Spencer Pratt, who is not going to win the primary and is not going to win in the mayor's office, but has captured the attention of enough Angelenos that he has crept past city councilman Nithya Raman, the progressive, you know, half foot in DSA, half foot out at DSA.

14:16But she came into the race earlier this year as the palatable progressive alternative to Karen Bass and has completely failed to launch. She has no message. Anytime you run for office, for any office at any level, you need to have a clear, compelling rationale for running for office. It's the whole bumper sticker thing, Matt. And she's got the backing of plenty of people. Including a lot of Hollywood people. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And not necessarily like moguls, like back in 2022 when, you know, Ari Emanuel and Jeffrey Katzenberg and Ted Sarandos were publicly having fundraisers for Karen Bass or Rick Caruso.

14:51This is more like famous faces. You know, I'm thinking of, for example, for example, Mindy Kaling or Colin Jost, like actors. And Nithya Raman, every time she's on Instagram, it's, you know, she's hanging out in Silver Lake at a DJ set. Yeah, her husband's a screenwriter. Yes, exactly. But the thing with Nithya Raman is, there's no message in the first place, and we saw this in the debate. You can't just run and say, I'm running against Karen Bass. And you have to have a very clear contrast message, which she has failed to present. And so you have Spencer Pratt creeping past Nithya Raman in the horse race, in every poll, etc.

15:25And the top two make the runoff. Karen Bass would love to run against Spencer Pratt in the runoff because he's a registered Republican, even though it's a nonpartisan race. And she would probably smoke him. Nithya Raman could beat Karen Bass. But back to your original question, Bass, only in like the last six months, has started to flick at, here's what I've done for Hollywood. As you mentioned, she, you know, appointed this film and tv board she's talked about uh you know she appointed somebody to be a liaison and nithra alman has criticized her for this what's the guy's name matt steve kang steve kang who doesn't have experience working in hollywood but he he understands how the different agencies you know do permitting and streamlining and all these processes film la is notorious everybody hates them yeah they have this exclusive contract to run film shoots and permit and it's just a huge hassle and their fees are gigantic compared to some other jurisdictions and doesn't seem like there's much change there despite them saying they're streamlining the process and it's just i i don't know it doesn't it's not convincing yeah well and just to go back to what we're talking about before a lot of this just goes back to the tax credit in sacramento and even if you're on and gave an interview the other day where she said she would be a loud advocate for that tax credit And by the way, one other thing about Nithya Raman, the city council, again, has started to pay attention to this a little bit more.

16:53And I think Karen Bass has been trying to, you know, do streamlining fee things and lower parking costs. There were seven, Matt, votes on helping, you know, the film industry in Los Angeles in March of this year, March 2026. And then Nithya recused herself from four of those votes. And so Bass's team is pointing to that saying she doesn't have anything to talk about on this. She doesn't care about the industry. Now, Nithya Rahman's take is that because her husband is a screenwriter and a showrunner that she didn't want – it was a conflict of interest for her to be involved. and but at the same time it's left her without something to point to that i did this i did that um maybe that was principled politics uh and principled governing but it's left her really without anything to stand on in the mayor's race now i think the baywatch episode from a few months ago illustrates what's going on here a little bit a little bit and also some misinformation stuff that's happening too explain what happened there so over here where i'm in venice uh you know the state and the mayor's office and our city councilwoman, Tracy Park and CD11 came together, by the way, using money from this tax credit program to land this Baywatch reboot that Fox is doing and film a lot of it on Venice Beach.

18:13And then I guess there's some anonymous Instagram account. Anyone listening to this town can write in and tell me what this is. But someone working on the set said they showed up to film and the night of or the day before, you know, they were told, well, you haven't paid the proper parking fees. And someone leaked this and said this film shoot is about to collapse because they haven't abided by, you know, the permitting process or whatever fees. And then again, this was only a couple of months ago, Karen Bass, keen to the fact that this is a real issue in the race, snapped to attention, worked with Tracy Park, who was one of her antagonists on the city council, a little bit to her right, and, you know, got this together because it was such a big story for Karen Bass and something she could point to in the mayoral that, hey, we're bringing this work back to Los Angeles.

19:03The minute there was a whiff of this shoot collapsing, you know, she really got to work. But it just illustrated how many little fees and processing things there are beyond just, you know, California giving people tax credits. Once you get to Los Angeles, you do have to go through Film L.A. for a bunch of different reasons. And Nithya Raman is also saying this, too. She wants to streamline the process. But this gets to what Bass is smartly doing, despite being very unpopular, is any time Spencer Pratt to her right or Nithya Raman to her left says something, she kind of co-ops it. And as the incumbent mayor, even though she's not a great communicator, she is still the sitting mayor.

19:44She has many more millions of dollars to spend on paid media. is kind of co-opting the most appealing parts of each side's message and taking it as her own. The other thing I will say to Bass's credit, or at least something that is one of her calling cards, is that she used to be the Speaker of the State Assembly way back in the day before she went to Congress during post-recession, California's huge budget crisis. And she was one person who pushed through the original tax credit back, I think, in 2010. And so that's something she's also saying as she goes around town. Although that wasn't clearly very effective if the decade that followed were some of the most runaway production that we've ever seen.

20:24But it is something. You wrote a piece for Puck last week that was a good overview of this race. And you explained a concept called the shy Pratt vote. And that resonated with me because I talked to people and people text me around Hollywood and they are those people, the shy Pratt voters. They're not going to announce that they are voting for this guy. You can call him an eccentric candidate, but he's putting out these AI videos of himself as Batman. He's got these billboards around town of, you know, an apocalypse happening and he's the only savior. Like explain the Pratt phenomenon and what is going on is this just pure grievance is this a sign that people in la want change and are fed up with the leadership or is this some kind of weird celebrity thing going on um so many threads to pull in there let's start with uh is this a grievance thing yes but at the same time that gives him a clear and compelling point of view on the race and like i said Nithya Raman got in the races and hasn't really been able to articulate why she is the most compelling alternative to Karen Bass with all of her, you know, failures, real or perceived.

21:42Spencer Pratt, his house burned down in the Palisades, partly because the Santaynez Reservoir was empty. Him and Bass have fought over, you know, wind speeds and whether you could fly planes, etc. So he is coming at this from, I am a victim. And then that activism, and on social media, By the way, a lot of people get this take a little bit wrong, in my opinion. I wrote about this. Spencer Pratt was obviously the villain in The Hills whenever that show was on in the 2000s on MTV. People call him a reality star. They compare him to Trump. There's some of that. Spencer Pratt loves nicknames. He knows how to break the fourth wall.

22:17He's funny at times. But he's really the first influencer candidate. it ever since he was famous on cable television he has gone over to snapchat instagram tiktok uh and really leaned into the vertical video content creator thing for many years before the fires he was he would film hummingbirds at his house yeah wasn't he selling crystals he said loves crystals you know he would be a hype woman like a big wife guy for his wife heidi montag and so he is just native to the cell phone camera and so once the fires happened he use that to criticize Karen Basura, as he says, and Gavin Newsom. And then, by the way, and this gets to what I think is a real question, is the Spencer Pratt phenomenon, and the phenomenon's limited, he's only polling at like 15, 20%.

23:03Actually, I think it's around 20 % according to the most recent Emerson poll ahead of Nithy Raman. But is this just a white West Side phenomenon? Is this just, you know, people in Brentwood and Palisades and other white pockets of the city, whether they can vote or not in the city itself? Because we know Santa Monica and Culver and WeHo, you know, broke off many years ago, Pasadena. But people with gardeners, people with nannies who, you know, have kids and don't want to see homeless people or drug addicts near their schools, near their playgrounds. I see it in Venice all the time. Of course, it's a real concern.

23:37And so Spencer Pratt's strength, I will say, is just forcing Democrats, including Karen Bass, to pay attention to these issues and exposing, I think, the frailty of Democratic politics and sort of polite, tolerant responses to street homelessness that clearly aren't working. right and so like i think that's the phenomenon however the question for spencer pratt is is do they have any appeal in black or latino neighborhoods in the rest of the city like to win and this is called karen bass's calling card you know she's got you know decades half of her life being an activist in south los angeles she's got unions she's got churla she's got activists of all races and spencer pratt and in different by the way and on the different side of the spectrum, Nithya Raman, both feel like white voter phenomenons.

24:25And the question in the primary, I can't wait to see what these precinct returns look like, because if Spencer Pratt is able to get over 30 % in Latino neighborhoods, wow, that's impressive. But for now, it does feel like the quote unquote shy Pratt voter donor also that you're talking about. You know, they, if he was a Democrat, maybe they'd be more willing to put their name on it. And plenty of people are, but he's not Rick Caruso. Rick Caruso spent, you know, millions of his own He's a billionaire. And still, you know, is more palatable to Democrats. Ran as a independent-turned-Democrat. And still lost to Karen Bass by 10 points.

24:59Different environment. This is a different election. But Pratt is still Spencer Pratt, one. And two, is a registered Republican in a city that broke overwhelmingly for Bernie Sanders over Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential primary. That's how liberal the city of Los Angeles is. But yet we see here a dichotomy. When I put this in Hollywood terms, Spencer Pratt is the West Side Hollywood person. And Nithya Raman is the East Side Hollywood person. Yes, exactly. And you see it in the donors where you've got, you know, Mindy Kaling and the sort of creative class on the East Side are for her. And then Spencer Pratt has like Haim Saban and Lucien Grange, the head of Universal Music.

25:42Yes. Jeannie Buss, Bobby Coder. Right. Brian Grazer. Exactly. The sort of moneyed West side people who frankly didn't have any real reason to care about city politics until their neighborhood in the Palisades burnt down. And they felt that the government that they had paid taxes to all these years wasn't there the one time they needed them. And they don't like homelessness. Well, nobody likes homelessness, but they are particularly attentive to the homelessness issue and quality of life issues that are now at the forefront. thanks to this guy with the megaphone. Yeah, that's exactly right. And look, this gets back to me saying he's not crazy.

26:21Like, he is a outsider in politics. He doesn't really have a filter, except when he does. And that's the thing, when you talk, and by the way, there are plenty of loud Trump voters. Those AI videos you mentioned, he's actually not making those, his supporters are. And then he's retweeting them and reposting them and sort of getting donations and going viral off of other people's creations. And, you know, I've talked to some people, by the way, this is kind of testing the boundaries of independent expenditure groups and sort of fundraising disclosures. Like those AI ads created by his supporters who don't live in Los Angeles, many of them, and are going really viral with national conservatives like Megyn Kelly or Clay Travis or whatever, people who don't live here or vote here.

27:04They're kind of doing the same work as an independent expenditure television ad is doing, which have to disclose their donors, have to disclose, you know, who's funding the ad. And this is just like free AI slop that is helping him go mega viral, raise money, get attention. He's really like breaking a lot of boundaries. So, again, I sound like a political hack who's sort of obsessed with process and whatnot. But the thing to Spencer Pratt's credit is, yes, it's a grievance driven campaign against Democrats. Yes, but also corrupt insiders who aren't doing anything about these people on the street who the slow police response times, animal abuse and skid row.

27:42It's very easy to run against somebody and just point at what's wrong without necessarily having a huge vision for the city and governing the city. Like in my piece about this for Puck, I referred to the competing jurisdictions that occasionally like manage to govern this city. There's the county. There's the city council. There's the mayor. There's the water commission. Like L.A. I mean, this goes back to like Chinatown. I mean, like L.A. is kind of an ungovernable place where there's different fiefdoms who have different power. And it's not New York City. And so it's very hard to govern and hard for Karen Bass to even govern.

28:16You have to be a ceremonial leader, and that's one reason she's failed, is she's not a great communicator who hasn't communicated a vision. Well, it's definitely gotten worse in the last four years. I mean, post-COVID, many cities have recovered from COVID. LA has not recovered from COVID. And you see it everywhere you look. And I think that's what's fueling a lot of this openness to someone like Spencer Pratt. Absolutely. And look, Karen Bass will say the homelessness count has dropped for the last two years. That's in her paid media ads. But Spencer Pratt says that's a lie, that the Rand Corporation has different figures.

28:49You just have to live here. I mean, even my wife says it, and she's a big Democrat, but she's like, people outside the country don't understand why people gravitate toward someone like Spencer Pratt. But there are some moderate Democrats and people who would never vote for Trump who have told me, who have been in rooms with Spencer Pratt, who are like, I'm going to vote for him. I'm going to give him some money because it's so visible here, Matt. And all of us have a story. It leads to local news every night. Look, violent crime is down in the city. Like credit to Mayor Bass, credit to Chief McDonnell.

29:18Homicides are down at their lowest level in like 40 years. But home invasions are still up, and that's on the local news every night. You don't have to go 10 feet in the city without seeing something. And that's where Pratt's powers come in as an emotional communicator. Those things might be anecdotal. They might not be backed up by any like widespread statistics. But you go and see the homeless. like on my street in venice i was walking my baby the other day in her stroller we have a swing over here near abit kinney by the way and there was a guy who was drugged out with his pants down sitting on her favorite swing formerly favorite but like i'm like i don't want that guy on my kid's swing like what like that's an anecdote yeah but he's tapping into that and visualizing it on all the social media channels and his his powers as a communicator are clearly having an impact you couple that with what's going on in hollywood with the content recession and all the problems that the industry is having and all of the residual effects that we've talked about and it leads a lot of hollywood people i think to consider someone like him yeah no absolutely but does he have a plan what is his plan for hollywood and for homelessness or is this just empty calories trolling to get yourself into the national spotlight well i sent this to you before we got on the pod here.