TLDR
Bill Maher is openly praising Spencer Pratt’s underdog run for Los Angeles mayor, lending mainstream credibility to a reality star campaign already drawing billionaire money and A-list attention.
The self-described liberal host used his podcast “Club Random” and HBO’s “Real Time” to frame Pratt as something few viewers ever expected him to be. Not a heel from “The Hills,” but a candidate capturing a restless mood in Los Angeles politics.
On “Club Random,” Maher repeatedly applauded Pratt’s promise to “drain the swamp” at City Hall and crack down on what Pratt describes as entrenched unions and complacent power brokers. Maher told him, “You had me at hello,” and praised his “very authentic” impatience with the way the city is run.
It is a striking alliance. Maher, 70, has built a career as a sharp-tongued fixture of liberal media who now brands himself a classic Democrat skeptical of what he calls California’s most extreme policies. Pratt, once reality television’s favorite villain alongside wife Heidi Montag, is recasting himself as a wildfire-hardened family man railing against fraud, corruption, and one-party rule.
The timing matters. An Emerson College poll recently nudged Pratt into second place in the mayoral field, slipping ahead of progressive councilmember Nithya Raman and closing in on incumbent Karen Bass. For a candidate best known from “The Hills,” that climb from long-shot to contender signals a campaign that has moved from punchline to problem for the political establishment.
Maher acknowledged that shift on air, telling Pratt, “You are on people’s minds out here. Nobody can take that away from you.” He urged the candidate to keep going and added that many Californians share their frustration with leaders who, in his words, “get drunk with power” when one party dominates.
Behind Pratt’s populist language sits serious financial and celebrity muscle. Google co-founder Sergey Brin cut a $1,800 check, the maximum individual donation allowed to the campaign. Brin has poured tens of millions into California ballot fights, including through his nonprofit Building a Better California, which has raised tens of millions to oppose a proposed one-time billionaire wealth tax.
Hollywood has not stayed on the sidelines either. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx are said to be supportive of Pratt’s bid, while Joe Rogan and Paris Hilton have also lined up behind him. For voters who remember Pratt and Montag splashing across 2000s tabloid covers, the endorsements add a layer of nostalgia to a race already charged with class, fame, and ideology.
Personal history fuels Pratt’s attacks on Bass. He and Montag lost their $2.5 million Pacific Palisades home in the January 2025 wildfires. Pratt has repeatedly blamed Bass’s budget cuts to fire services and her absence from the city as flames spread. Bass, who was in Ghana for a presidential inauguration at the time, has faced ongoing criticism over Los Angeles’s wildfire preparedness.
Maher, speaking from his own $20 million perch on Santa Catalina Island, has started calling Pratt “a nice guy” and “charming.” “I know I’m supposed to hate him. I do not,” he told his audience. Whether that evolving narrative is enough to turn a onetime tabloid villain into the next mayor of Los Angeles is now a live question for voters, donors, and the city’s powerful unions.
Does Bill Maher’s embrace of Spencer Pratt make you more likely to take the former reality star’s candidacy seriously, or is celebrity politics wearing thin in Los Angeles?
