Los Angeles may have its own Zohran in the form of ex-reality star Spencer Pratt

On the reality television show “The Hills,” Spencer Pratt played something of a villain, blamed for spreading a salacious rumor and driving a wedge between his girlfriend and her best friend. Pratt is casting himself as a hero in his latest venture, a bid to be mayor of Los Angeles, in which he’s promising to rid the nation’s second most populous city of disorder and dysfunction. Originally greeted with bemusement, Pratt is now upending the race with early voting underway ahead of the June 2 election. The Republican is riding a wave of buzz fueled by viral videos taking aim at incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, Gov. Gavin Newsom and others. Pratt’s goal is to turn the chatter into a ticket to a November runoff against Bass, a Democrat who is struggling to recover from a widely panned response to devastating wildfires last year. He would face long odds in a city that last elected a Republican mayor in 1997. But during last week’s debate, Pratt was one of only three candidates onstage, alongside Bass and progressive City Council member Nithya Raman. “As crazy as this will sound, I’m the adult in the room,” Pratt said. A populist campaign against liberal governance Pratt and his supporters are making a populist appeal to voters, emphasizing day-to-day concerns about life in Los Angeles and leaning on visceral imagery of drug use and homeless encampments from the grittier corners of the city of nearly 4 million. He blames the city’s Democratic leaders and pledges to “stop these corrupt politicians from destroying our city.” He advocates a hard line against homelessness, pledging to eliminate encampments and pursue criminal investigations of nonprofit organizations that serve people living on the streets. “These people do not want a bed,” he said in last week’s debate. “They want fentanyl or meth.” Pratt announced his campaign in January at an event marking the one-year anniversary of the deadly Palisades Fire, which destroyed his home and th