{"id":1348,"date":"2026-06-06T08:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T08:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=1348"},"modified":"2026-06-06T08:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T08:36:11","slug":"prospects-have-dimmed-for-spencer-pratt-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=1348","title":{"rendered":"Prospects have dimmed for Spencer Pratt, Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Since Election Day on Tuesday, Los Angeles County has begun the long, slow process of counting late-arriving and provisional ballots.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump pardons former US Congressman Stephen Buyer convicted of insider trading<\/a><\/p>\n

And the race for second place in the mayor\u2019s contest is moving in a direction that should concern Spencer Pratt supporters, and anyone who thinks Los Angeles needs to move toward a more centrist, common-sense course.<\/p>\n

Friday afternoon\u2019s update added roughly 140,000 ballots countywide, with about 42.7% from within the city of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Mayor Karen Bass remains firmly in first place with 34.98% of the vote. The real drama is the battle for the second runoff spot between Pratt and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman.<\/p>\n

And the latest numbers were a major win for Raman.<\/p>\n

Going into this update, my estimate was that Raman needed to outperform Pratt by roughly 11 percentage points in the remaining vote to have a realistic chance of catching him.<\/p>\n

Instead, she did much better than that.<\/p>\n

Raman gained 23,115 votes in Friday\u2019s update, compared to 10,711 for Pratt and 20,419 for Bass. In a single ballot drop, Raman netted 12,404 votes on Pratt.<\/p>\n

Put another way, she received more than twice as many votes as Pratt in this batch.<\/p>\n

The updated totals now stand at 215,868 votes for Bass, 174,260 for Pratt, and 153,588 for Raman.<\/p>\n

Pratt still holds second place, but his lead over Raman has been cut to just 20,672 votes.<\/p>\n

With observers estimating that 550,000 to 600,000 ballots may still remain countywide, there are likely well over 200,000 mayoral votes left to count.<\/p>\n

That is more than enough for Raman to make up the difference if she keeps posting numbers like Friday\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The remaining vote appears to be behaving as many California election veterans expected. Late-counted ballots have historically tended to be younger, more urban, and more progressive than the Election Night vote.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the week Pratt appeared to have a relatively comfortable path to the runoff.<\/p>\n

Today, that path looks considerably narrower.<\/p>\n

The ongoing count also highlights a problem with California\u2019s election system.<\/p>\n

Most voters expect elections to be resolved in a straightforward way: The polls close, the ballots are counted, and winners are declared.<\/p>\n

Read more Jalen Brunson blinked\u2014\u00a0and somehow the Knicks held on<\/a><\/p>\n

Instead, Californians are left watching races change for days or weeks as late ballots trickle in.<\/p>\n

To be clear, there is no evidence of fraud in the Los Angeles mayor\u2019s race.<\/p>\n

But when results shift dramatically after Election Night, it undermines confidence. <\/p>\n

If\u00a0Pratt ultimately falls short after leading for much of the week, this process will add insult to injury for his supporters.<\/p>\n

And if Pratt does not make the runoff, it will say a great deal about where Los Angeles is headed.<\/p>\n

His campaign has focused on quality of life, public safety, homelessness, and basic competence at City Hall.<\/p>\n

If a common-sense, solutions-oriented candidate cannot even make the runoff, some Angelenos may decide the city is not ready to change \u2014 and start calling U-Haul.<\/p>\n

In the governor\u2019s race, Xavier Becerra appears all but certain to advance to the November runoff and has now barely moved ahead of Steve Hilton for first place.<\/p>\n

But Tom Steyer\u2019s path has gone from difficult to highly improbable. Hilton leads Steyer by 336,088 votes, and with roughly 3.1 million ballots left statewide, Steyer would need to beat Hilton by about 11 points across all remaining ballots just to catch him.<\/p>\n

That is a massive ask.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

These ballots are not a two-way contest between Hilton and Steyer; they are being split among Becerra, Hilton, Steyer, Chad Bianco, Katie Porter, and others.<\/p>\n

Steyer would need late ballots to break dramatically in his favor while Hilton simultaneously collapses.<\/p>\n

Mathematically, Steyer is still alive.<\/p>\n

Politically, the odds are overwhelmingly against him.<\/p>\n

Unless the remaining vote looks radically different from the vote already counted, Hilton appears strongly positioned to advance against Becerra \u2014 giving California voters something they may not have in the Los Angeles mayor\u2019s race: a vigorous debate between two candidates offering fundamentally different visions for the future.<\/p>\n

Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Graham Platner dismisses mounting allegations at Maine rally, declares supporters \u2018have my back\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If a common-sense, solutions-oriented candidate like Spencer Pratt cannot even make the runoff, some Angelenos may decide the city is not ready to change \u2014 and start calling U-Haul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nProspects have dimmed for Spencer Pratt, Los Angeles - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=1348\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Prospects have dimmed for Spencer Pratt, Los Angeles - 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