The lunar calendar may say it’s the Year of the Horse, but for Los Angeles politics it’s been more like the Year of the Dog.
Spencer Pratt made animal welfare a key platform in his unsuccessful campaign for mayor, taking out billboard space around town showing himself surrounded by dogs and railing against animal abuse in social media posts. But Pratt wasn’t the only one seeking to win the votes of animal rights activists.
City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who will be in the Nov. 3 runoff against Mayor Karen Bass, is promising to fix L.A.’s animal shelter system, which she said is in state of crisis, blaming a “broken spay/neuter program” among other factors. Dylan Kendall, a longtime cat rescuer and advocate, made her background in animal welfare a centerpiece in her unsuccessful bid against Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez.
Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney published a 10-step plan to support animal welfare as part of his campaign for city attorney.
“Politicians are understanding that this is a significant group of people who can move the needle in races, especially close races,” McKinney said. He finished in second place in the primary and will be in the runoff against Marissa Roy, a democratic socialist who works as a deputy state attorney general.
No candidate, however, focused more on animal rights than Pratt during the recent primary campaign.
“I don’t want anybody to endorse me except for the moms and animal lovers in L.A. That’s my entire vote,” Pratt said the weekend before the primary on the Fox News comedy show “Gutfeld!”
In a nearly 10-minute long video, Pratt repeated social media posts that dogs on Skid Row are used to test drugs, are bred for drug money and are left in poor conditions by their unhoused owners, among other concerns about overcrowded, dirty shelters across the city.
Social media descriptions of Skid Row dogs being used for fights and to test drugs often lack credible evidence and actionable information, said Los Angeles Police Department Lt. Andrew Mathes, officer-in-charge of the Central Gang Impact Team that works in the Skid Row area.
Paul Koretz, who championed animal rights during his years on the City Council, said Pratt’s claims were a “dramatic fabrication” of the actual problems on Skid Row, aimed at winning votes. He and others say the bigger problem is illegal breeding, leading to underfed and neglected animals that end up in shelters or dead on the streets.
Even so, some animal rights activists credit viral social media posts depicting animal abuse as focusing public attention on the issue.
“When they finally go viral online, that’s when the public wants to get involved. That’s when political candidates can definitely get involved,” said Liv Sigel, founder of the Underdog Community Project.
Other activists have directed much of the ire at Mayor Karen Bass for the city’s animal abuse problems, saying chronic underfunding of the Animal Services department, including the spay and neuter fund, will lead to more sickly and abandoned animals entering the system.
The nonprofit Stand Up For Pits sued the city and Bass last year, arguing in a May 2026 amended complaint from that officials have failed to enforce animal abuse laws on city streets and allow shelter pets to live in deplorable conditions.
Bass campaign spokesperson Alex Stack noted that she helped launch spay-and-neuter clinic pop-ups for Skid Row and started an initiative to train 100 LAPD officers to identify and handle cases of animal cruelty. The LAPD’s Mathes said that initiative, launched last November, has saved 45 dogs and led to the filing of six felony cases of animal cruelty and neglect.
“Social media makes it much easier to spread outrage and then to offer real solutions to real problems,” Stack said in a statement. “Animal neglect and abuse on Skid Row is a real, longstanding issue, but we have to make sure we are offering real solutions to the most pressing problems,”
Bass pledged that L.A. shelters would be “a national model for animal welfare” after taking office in 2022. She hired a new general manager, Staycee Dains, but Dains lasted only a year in the job. She told The Times that insurmountable red tapeblocked her from making changes.
More recently, Bass has hired a new general manager for Animal Services, Gabrielle Amster, and helped organize a $14-million grant to city shelters in partnership with Best Friends Animal Society and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Raman, in response to a question on the campaign trail, said she would increase funding to Animal Services if elected mayor, as well as install new leadership in tune with local activists and expand spay-and-neuter programs to save money in the long run, decreasing the amount of liability payouts coming from the department.
“This is an issue I think matters to a lot of people,” Raman said at the campaign event.
Joey Tuccio, a Skid Row dog rescuer, said he supported Pratt because he was the first mayoral candidate to bring serious attention to the issue. He has criticized both Bass and Raman for what he called their negligence to animals’ conditions on city streets.
“We have called the police so many times about dogs being beat, dogs being neglected, dogs dying on the street,” Tuccio said. “And nine times out of 10 they do not show up.”
Tuccio said he has invited both candidates to walk Skid Row with him for a first-hand look at the problems he sees. So far, he said, he is waiting for a response.
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