The Guy We Loved to Hate

The Hills villain Spencer Pratt might become mayor of Los Angeles. This isn't an endorsement. It's a Florida momma noticing what the press won't say.

Jun 02, 2026

Don’t tell anyone, but I love me some reality television.

There. I said it. Take my homeschool mom card if you have to.

I watched The Hills. I watched every episode of Big Brother in seasons I am embarrassed to admit. I watched Real Housewives of every city they could find a Housewife in. I watched Survivor back when Richard Hatch was running around the beach in his birthday suit and we were all pretending to be scandalized. My husband, who thinks reality TV is the lowest form of human suffering, is not wrong about that (although I have converted him to Survivor). I still watch it.

And the whole reason I kept tuning in to The Hills, the whole reason any of us did, was a smug blonde named Spencer Pratt.

He was the villain. But that is not exactly right either, and it took me twenty years to figure out why I could not stop watching.

He was the outsider.

Lauren Conrad rolled her eyes at him. Audrina avoided him in scenes. Whitney was too polite to say what she thought of him. The whole pretty in-group of that show treated him like an unwelcome cousin who had crashed their birthday party and refused to leave. And he just sat there, smirking, hawking his crystals, picking fights with the producers, marrying Heidi on camera, knowing every single one of them wanted him gone, and not caring one bit.

Bless his reality TV heart, he was having the time of his life.

That is the man who may come in second place in the race for mayor of Los Angeles.

He has been doing this his entire career.

Before The Hills, he created a show called The Princes of Malibu. He cast Brody Jenner. The show flopped, Brody became a star. Then he crashed The Hills himself by way of Heidi and made himself the most hated man on basic cable. Then Celebrity Big Brother in the UK. Then I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. Then Marriage Boot Camp. Then House of Villains. Then The Hills New Beginnings.

Along the way he sold crystals. Actual crystals. As in, you give him money, he gives you a rock, you put the rock on your desk, and the rock allegedly helps with prosperity. We have come a long way from a city on a hill.

He also collects hummingbirds. He once told Audubon magazine that one of his hummingbirds, a fella named Tiki, was “one of the best friends I have, factoring in humans.” That is a real quote. I have read it three times. It has not gotten less funny.

He kept walking into rooms he was not supposed to be in. The polished people kept hoping he would go away. He never did.

And now he is walking into City Hall.

Now let me say something here I want you to actually hear.

I am not endorsing this man.

Bless your heart if you think a Florida momma at a kitchen table in Winter Haven is going to tell Los Angeles how to vote. I am not. I do not live there. I do not know that city well enough to tell anyone in it who to pick.

I am noticing.

There is a difference, and we should be honest about it. Endorsing is when you tell somebody who to vote for. Noticing is when you pay attention to what is happening and try to understand it before it shows up at your kitchen table too. The press has stopped doing the second one entirely, which is part of how a reality TV villain ended up polling at twenty two percent. So somebody around here has to do it.

It might as well be us.

Here is the thing about America that the press keeps forgetting.

We have never curtsied to court.

The political establishment has had a name for this voter since Andrew Jackson. Dangerous. Unserious. Vulgar. They said it about Jackson when he came down from Tennessee with mud on his boots. They said it about Truman the haberdasher. They said it about Reagan the actor. They said it about Trump the developer. They are saying it now about Pratt the reality TV villain. They will say it about the next one too. And bless their credentialed little hearts, they will never understand why half the country keeps voting for them anyway.

The country votes for them because the country is tired. Tired of being managed by people who have not fixed anything in twenty years. Tired of being told that the needles in the park are not really there, that the encampment outside the school is not really there, that the city on fire is not really on fire.

Karen Bass was overseas when the Palisades burned. Spencer Pratt’s house went up. His parents’ house went up. Ten thousand structures went up. She came home to a podium. He came home to a campaign.

That is the only sentence I am sure about in this whole race.

That does not make him qualified.

It does explain why people listened.

When CNN asked Spencer Pratt last week when he started leaning Republican, he did not give the usual answer. He did not say tax policy. He did not say abortion. He did not say Reagan.

He said he started getting death threats. He went to the police. The officers told him to get a gun. He tried to get a concealed carry permit. And the only people in California who would help him protect his wife and his children were the Republicans.

“That’s what I aligned with,” he told the reporter. “My safety. My personal safety. My family’s safety.”

That is the most boring conversion story in modern American politics, and it is also the most common one. That is how the suburban mom got here. That is how the small business owner got here. That is how the dad who tried to defend a neighbor at a school board meeting got here. We did not wake up one morning and decide to switch teams. We started as people whose own party stopped protecting us, and we walked across the aisle to the only door that opened.

The press calls that a culture war.

We call it Tuesday.

The polished people have a slur for the voter who does not genuflect. They call it MAGA. Sometimes that is what it is. Sometimes it is something older. It is the oldest American move there is. We do not curtsy to court. We came here to leave one behind.

The yoga mom who is starting to think Spencer Pratt is making sense knows in her bones that she is not supposed to think that. Her whole social circle would freeze her out. The men in the AI campaign ad are not joking when they keep saying “I’m not MAGA or anything” before they describe their daughter stepping on a needle.

That fear is the velvet rope.

And the loud guy is not leaving.

In that same CNN interview, the reporter asked Spencer Pratt which politicians he admired. He said none of the modern ones.

He said his role model is Jesus Christ.

Make of that what you will. The press will tell you to roll your eyes at it. The press rolls its eyes at every man who answers Jesus. But you and I both know what the press thinks of women who answer Jesus too.

The slur is the same slur.

Scripture has a thing for outsiders.

David was the youngest of eight, the one his own father did not bother to call in from the field when Samuel came to anoint a king. Esther was a Jewish orphan in a Persian palace, raised by an uncle, no résumé for queen. Moses had a speech impediment. Gideon was the least of his clan. Paul was the worst applicant for evangelism on the planet until the Lord knocked him off his horse on the road to Damascus.

For such a time as this, Mordecai told Esther in chapter four, verse fourteen. He did not tell her she was qualified. He told her she was here.

The God of the Bible has never picked résumés. He picks vessels. And the credentialed class has never recognized one of them in real time. Not one. They missed David. They missed the prophets. They missed John the Baptist. They missed Jesus of Nazareth so badly that they nailed Him to a tree.

The credentialed class is missing things again now.

They are always missing things.

None of this means every loud man with a memoir is the next David. Every outsider still has to pass the test. By their fruits ye shall know them. That verse does not get an exemption for personality or fire or charisma. It applies to the favorite candidate too.

The press will not tell you which fruit is good.

You have to look yourself.

Here is the part nobody saw coming.

The May Emerson poll has Spencer Pratt at twenty two percent. He is in second place behind Karen Bass. He has surged twelve points since March. Forty percent of likely voters are still undecided.

Lucian Grainge is funding him. Dan Loeb is funding him. Haim Saban, a lifelong Democratic donor, is funding him. The Winklevoss twins, who you may remember from suing Mark Zuckerberg in the movie about Facebook, are reportedly funding him. Paris Hilton is endorsing him. Joe Rogan is plugging him. Adam Carolla is plugging him on every podcast that will have him.

A reality TV villain with a crystal business, a hummingbird named Tiki, a memoir titled The Guy You Loved to Hate, and a USC political science degree, might actually become the mayor of the second largest city in America.

I am not telling you this is good.

I am not telling you this is bad.

I am telling you it is happening, and the polite people are still pretending it cannot.

Hey Los Angeles.

A momma in Florida is paying attention.

Not because I get to vote in your race. Because I am voting in mine.

A Florida momma at a kitchen table in Winter Haven is watching to see what the second largest city in America is going to do tomorrow. A momma in Tampa is watching. A momma in Polk County. A momma in Ohio. A momma in Pennsylvania. A momma in Texas. A momma in your state too.

You are not voting alone tomorrow.

The whole country is at the kitchen table with you.

Maybe we loved to hate him because he was the only one not asking the in-group’s permission to exist.

Maybe we were rehearsing for a question we did not know we would be asked.

And maybe, just maybe, the polite people in Los Angeles will wake up Wednesday morning and learn what the rest of the country has been trying to tell them for ten years.

You can only vote with him. Or against him. But you cannot vote him away.

Bless their hearts.

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