Joe Rogan Supercharges Spencer Pratt's Campaign for Los Angeles Mayor After Endorsing Reality Star

Joe Rogan’s latest political shoutout didn’t go to a seasoned politician, it went to a former reality TV villain. And just like that, Spencer Pratt’s long-shot bid for Los Angeles mayor is no longer just a local story.

The Hills alum, who launched his campaign after losing his home in the devastating Palisades Fire, found a megaphone on Rogan’s podcast.

“I can't vote for you, but I'm rooting for you,” Rogan said, adding, “I mean, if I lived in Los Angeles, no question whatsoever, I would vote for you.”

“To be clear, I never wanted to run for any political office or have anything to do with politicians,” Pratt said during the interview.

“What happened was after spending a year uncovering how my house and my parents’ house burned down, and my neighbors burned alive and 7,000 houses burned, and then I realized there's a cover-up going on,” he explained.

“Major podcast endorsements like Joe Rogan’s don’t usually work by changing deeply held political views. Their real impact is psychological. They signal relevance,” says psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert.“

As I argue in my upcoming book Therapy Nation, we’re living in a culture where influence is increasingly driven by emotional connection and perceived authenticity rather than institutional authority. Rogan’s endorsement carries weight not because he’s a political expert, but because his audience feels they know him and trust his instincts,” Alpert explains.

“More searches, more social media conversation, more interview requests. But in lower-profile races, attention itself is power,” he says.

“The Rogan-Pratt moment is a masterclass in earned media. And a warning,” says Amore Philip, Founder of Apples and Oranges Public Relations. “Yes, the Rogan bump is real, but it works differently in a local race than it does in a national one.” There is also risk from a Rogan endorsement in a city like Los Angeles.

“His audience skews male, anti-establishment, and right-leaning, which may not be the coalition you need to win a mayoral race in L.A.,” she explains.

While Rogan’s endorsement likely won’t move many local votes, Philip points out that it “changes the donor conversation overnight.”

“People who would never have heard of this race are now googling it, and some of them will write checks. That's the real Rogan bump at the down-ballot level, not votes, but visibility and money that buys visibility,” she explains.

Media and cultural analyst Kaivan Shroff agrees, noting that the financial impact can be immediate. “A ‘Rogan bump’ would show up first in fundraising, and it tends to look like a rush of small-dollar money from people who weren’t paying attention to the race an hour earlier,” he says.

For Pratt, the endorsement has already reframed his candidacy from a niche campaign to a headline-grabbing cultural moment

“Listening to a podcast is passive, voting in a local election is not,” Shroff says. “He can create noise and attention, but doesn’t necessarily create voters.”