'The Hills' Star Spencer Pratt Never 'Planned' to Be Mayor of L.A.: 'It Is Personal'

Becoming the mayor of Los Angeles wasn't on Spencer Pratt's bingo card.

The Hills star was prompted to run after the Pacific Palisades wildfire consumed his home in January 2025.

His fate will be decided in the election on Tuesday, June 2.

"I never planned to be the mayor of L.A.,” Pratt, 42, confessed on the podcast "Club Random with Bill Maher" on Monday, June 1. "I only ran to have a bigger platform to expose all the negligence, is the reason why I even ran because this person in charge burned my house down, my mom’s house, my neighbors.”

Maher countered saying, "You’re making it a little too personal. I mean, [Mayor Karen Bass] is not a great mayor...and that is a very common view even among a lot of Democrats. She f----- up some things, a lot of people f----- up some things...one person didn’t burn your house down.” Pratt shot back, "Agreed, agreed. But let me...one person who’s in charge of all the things that got f----- up that burned my house down, so you have to hold somebody responsible who’s in charge.” Pratt admitted the mayor was out of the country during the fire, noting, "She was in Ghana, so she obviously didn’t light the fire, so ... But it is personal because I have to hear my crying mom every day, the lady across from my house burned alive...that lady with parrots, you know, so it is personal.”

Pratt got his start executive producing Princes of Malibu in 2005 before appearing on The Hills from 2007-2010, and The Hills: New Beginnings from 2019-2021.

He married Hills costar Heidi Montag, 39, in 2008, and the couple is parents to son Gunner, 8, and Ryker, 3.

“Rewind: When I was 20, I was at USC studying political science,” he told Maher. “I see The Osbournes on, they get $25 million, so I call my friend Brody Jenner, whose dad was David Foster, and I say ‘can I film a reality show about you guys?’ It happened so I sold this at Fox at 20 years old, and then Foster advised me to be like Simon Cowell, which I didn’t understand, but like the villain, so I leaned into that. Simon Cowell is the villain because he’s telling people how not to sing. I was the villain as a douchebag. I leaned into that, and it was very profitable. What happened is that people took it very real, so I kept leaning in because I was chasing ratings bonuses. I was all-in on my character. People took it very serious back then.”

He continued, “It was pre-Instragram, X hadn’t even dropped, it was Twitter. This was you’re watching the box, and five million people think that’s real, so I was getting all these death threats. My security is like ‘you need to get a gun,’ so I get a gun, and then as I am a gun owner in Los Angeles with my wife … in Los Angeles to have a gun, you need a CCW, that’s a concealed carry weapons permit. That’s very hard to get, and the only people who support a CCW was the Republican party. All I cared about politically was to protect my wife and my kids. That’s my only political thing I’m connected to. It was guns to keep my wife safe, and then kids.”

He never felt the need to go into politics until he lost his home.

“I’m also from L.A., and I don’t know a single Republican,” he said on the podcast. “I went to Crossroads, I grew up here. Every one of my friends is a Democrat. All the people I talked to all day long are Democrats. My little sister is the most progressive Democrat in California. I don’t do this party stuff. I don’t care about that. I was trying to be famous. If you talk about politics, from my perspective, respectfully, the people who talk about politics, it’s a lose-lose. You’re going to p--- off half the people. I was just trying to get on shows and be casted. So I never did politics.”