Which party – Spencer Pratt, the reality TV star and former “The Hills” villain, says he switched to the Republican Party after years of death threats and gun-focused frustration—yet he is still running for mayor of Los Angeles as an independent.
On the day Spencer Pratt decided to step into Los Angeles politics, the timing felt personal. One year after his house burned down in the catastrophic Palisades Fire. the 42-year-old former reality star announced he would run for mayor of Los Angeles. California—then immediately complicated the question voters most want answered: which party. exactly. is he with?.
For months, Pratt sounded like a candidate staying above party lines, telling people he was non-partisan. But when he later clarified his political allegiance, his story shifted. He ultimately said he became a Republican—while also insisting his mayoral run would be as an independent candidate.
Pratt is no stranger to living in the spotlight. Known for starring in The Hills. I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!. and Celebrity Big Brother U.K. he built a reputation as a reality TV “villain.” He’s married to fellow reality personality Heidi Montag. and the couple have been married since 2008. Long before any campaign talk, Pratt studied political science at the University of Southern California.
That background helped set expectations for a spectacle. What voters didn’t expect was the way his party alignment kept tugging in different directions. Throughout most of his mayoral campaign, Pratt didn’t take either side. He said he voted for Donald Trump in 2024, but insisted he remained a non-partisan candidate. “All my supporters in Los Angeles are Democrats,” he previously told CBS. “Everyone I know. my family. are all Democrats.” In a separate interview with NBC. Pratt said he wasn’t aligned with a party at all: “When you vote for Spencer Pratt on your ballot today or tonight. it’ll say Spencer Pratt. community advocate. because that’s how I identify. I do not represent a party. I don’t have a campaign manager. I don’t have campaign consultants. There’s no political party backing me.”.
But later, Pratt clarified that he was a Republican. In a May 2026 CNN interview. the L.A.-native explained the switch from being an Independent to joining the Republican Party. “When I was a hated reality star, I got so many death threats,” Pratt noted. “I had so much security and police, and what did they tell me to do?. Get a gun.” He went on to claim that “the only people that supported a CCW [permits to carry concealed weapons] was a Republican.”.
Pratt’s argument tracks a very specific lived frustration: threats, security, and the push toward firearms policy. Yet even with that explanation, he has kept his campaign’s ballot identity separate. He is running for mayor of L.A. as an independent candidate.
There’s an additional twist in his own account of where he started. Pratt says he was a Democrat at one point, but abandoned the party because of his views on guns.
The sequence of Pratt’s statements makes the contradiction hard to miss: he has described himself as non-partisan and backed by Democrats, then described himself as Republican—while still filing his mayoral bid under an independent banner.
Spencer Pratt mayor of Los Angeles Palisades Fire The Hills Heidi Montag Republican Democrat independent candidate CCW permits