Spencer Pratt’s campaign to be the next mayor of Los Angeles has had a decidedly national flavor, boosted by viral A.I. videos and frequent interviews on television news programs airing across the country. That strategy has brought him a stunning amount of attention — and an avalanche of donations.
But a huge share of his financial support turns out to be coming from outside of the district where Mr. Pratt, a former reality TV star, is running. Just 17 percent of his individual contributors reside within the city of Los Angeles, a New York Times analysis of campaign donations through May 27 shows, amounting to about $750,000 of the nearly $3.75 million he raised.
The data, from mandatory filings made to the Los Angeles Ethics Commission, reveals a far different approach by his chief rivals, the incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and Nithya Raman, a progressive City Council member.
Unlike Mr. Pratt, they haven’t been making the rounds of CNN, Fox News and CBS in recent weeks, and neither Ms. Bass nor Ms. Raman appears to have generated legions of devotees willing to use artificial intelligence to produce videos attacking their opponents. Their support has been overwhelmingly local.
Roughly 50 percent of Ms. Bass’s individual donors live within the limits of Los Angeles, a district that contains 2.21 million registered voters. That translates to around $1.5 million of the $3.3 million from individual donors that she has raised so far. In the case of Ms. Raman, who has been second or third in most polls, about 68 percent of her individual contributors live in the city, and they have accounted for about $565,000 million of the $921,000 her campaign has brought in from individual donors.
(Both Ms. Bass and Ms. Raman elected to participate in a public matching funds program; Ms. Bass has received about $1.1 million and Ms. Raman has received more than $1.2 million from that program to date. Mr. Pratt elected to opt out of the program.)
Money is the lifeblood of any campaign, and Mr. Pratt has shown himself to be remarkably adept at raising it: During the first three weeks of May, he raised more funds than Ms. Bass did by a margin of roughly 10 to 1.
But whether out-of-district financial support translates into electoral success is a subject of much study among political scientists. They have explored whether succeeding at raising cash from people who aren’t in the district suggests a lack of support from those who are.
One study of senate candidates from 2020 found that “most of the candidates who received a greater percentage of their campaign contributions from out-of-state donors than their opponent lost the election.”
Mr. Pratt has had an unusually high profile for a candidate for local office, and his adoption — if not outright endorsement — by many on the political right, including President Trump himself, has turned him into a recent subject of fascination for conservatives around the country.
That interest has translated into donations of $1,800, the maximum allowed in the primary, from figures including the former Trump adviser Jason Miller; the Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale; and the hedge-fund billionaire Daniel Loeb. Tellingly, none of those people live in Los Angeles.
Zohran Mamdani, another recent candidate for local office with a decidedly national profile, provides an interesting comparison point. About 63 percent of the donations he received while running for New York City mayor last year came from within the city, according to the New York City Campaign Finance Board.
A further challenge for Mr. Pratt is Los Angeles’s political geography. Some of his strongest local support has come from areas affected by, or that were near, the Palisades fire that in 2025 cost Mr. Pratt his home. Those areas include Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Malibu and Manhattan Beach.
In total, donors in those wealthy enclaves contributed about $315,000 to his campaign as of May 27, the Times analysis found. But none of those areas are part of the city of Los Angeles: They are separate municipalities, and their residents cannot vote in Los Angeles.
Ken Bensinger covers media and politics for The Times.
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