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The latest twist in the Los Angeles mayoral primary is exactly the kind of theater Democrats love: a late-count surge of mail-in ballots that looks set to shove Republican hopeful Spencer Pratt out of the top two. What began as a surprising splash by a reality TV star has turned into a lesson in math and voter registration—one that conservatives should have seen coming, but too often don’t.
Late-count ballots flip the script
On the day after the primary, new batches of counted ballots narrowed Spencer Pratt’s lead to under one percent. The most recent drop of about 58,558 votes broke roughly 40% for Nithya Raman, 33% for Mayor Karen Bass, and only 17.6% for Pratt. That left a razor-thin margin of just over 7,000 votes between Pratt and Raman, with roughly a quarter of the votes still uncounted. In plain terms: the late-count mail-in haul boosted Raman enough that she now looks likely to knock Pratt out of the runoff.
Why California’s top-two system matters
California’s so-called “jungle primary” does exactly what it was designed to do: allow two candidates from the same party to advance and shut out the opposition. In heavily Democratic Los Angeles, that means a Republican needs more than celebrity and Twitter to survive. With Democrats outnumbering Republicans by a wide margin in registered voters here, the math is not a conspiracy — it’s arithmetic. Late-count ballots have a history of skewing more Democratic in big-city contests, and that pattern is playing out again.
What this means for conservatives
This isn’t just about Spencer Pratt. It’s about strategy. Running a viable Republican campaign in Los Angeles requires targeting base voters early, crushing turnout among swing voters, and planning for every type of ballot count. You can’t treat a mayoral race like a reality show audition and expect the system to play nice. If Pratt is bounced by the late-count surge, it will be a predictable result of low GOP registration and poor on-the-ground infrastructure — not some mysterious plot.
Wrapping up: lessons and next steps
If Nithya Raman overtakes Pratt and squeezes Republicans out of the runoff, conservatives should take the loss seriously. Blaming the ballots won’t fix registration gaps, voter outreach failures, or messaging that doesn’t resonate in urban centers. Learn the lesson: when you want to win in a Democrat-dominated city, you need organization, voter contact, and policy messages that cut through. Otherwise, reality TV stunts make good headlines but bad strategy — and the city gets to pick another left-leaning duo in the fall.
