California has an embarrassment of riches. It’s got bursting green vistas, and rocky cliffs overlooking the Pacific. It’s got all the beautiful actors toiling away in studios to make us the next season of our favorite show. And it’s got Caitlin Flanagan, a daughter of Berkeley, who today weighs the chances that Spencer Pratt, a son of Los Angeles, will be the next mayor of the second-biggest city in the country. Could the Pratt Daddy, as Caitlin calls him in her essay below, in spite of all his foibles, or maybe even because of them, be just the hell-raiser that the City of Angels needs to turn itself around? Pratt’s official campaign slogan might be “LA is worth saving,” but a more accurate one might be a barb from his reality TV days. —Suzy Weiss

You don’t go to war with the angry reality TV star you want; you go to war with the angry reality TV star you’ve got. And so it is that Spencer Pratt, previously of The Hills (“That’s why you’re not in my life, you crazy bitch”), owner of an online business called Pratt Daddy that trades in “healing” crystals, author of The Guy You Loved to Hate, and holder of a University of Southern California bachelor’s degree in political science, has taken it into his mind to become the next mayor of Los Angeles.

And why not? In post-literate America, the old rattle bag of accomplishments means nothing. Our next president will not be chosen from a field of contenders wreathed with meaningless laurels. What even is a Rhodes Scholar? The ideal candidate for 2028 will probably be a Golden Bachelor with Survivor experience.

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Pratt Daddy’s candidacy is motivated by a singular and purifying anger—more of a hatred, really—all of it directed at the incumbent, Karen Bass. He holds her directly responsible for the burning of his and his parents’ houses in the Pacific Palisades. Unseating her is his intention. The primary election is next week, and the top two candidates will advance to the general election in November (if one of them gets more than that 50 percent of the vote in the primary, he or she becomes mayor, a scenario that is impossible to imagine. Bass and Pratt are expected to run against each other in the general. I assume he won’t win, but I never thought Richard Hatch would win the first season of Survivor. The race is volatile, with Pratt Daddy releasing TikToks (today’s equivalent of The Federalist Papers) every day. As for his secondary goal, the political humiliation of Bass, he’s already achieved it.

Call this a requiem for Los Angeles. We have nowhere else to go...