NEWNow you can listen to Fox News articles!
Spencer Pratt’s independent bid to run for Mayor of Los Angeles hangs in the balance nearly a week after Election Day.
With the jungle primary leaving incumbent Democratic Mayor Karen Bass already determined to move on to a November run, Pratt’s margin over Democratic City Council member Nithya Raman has dwindled to just 1% with a few thousand votes left to make up the difference.
Pratt led Raman by just 7,494 votes in the recent AP polls with 78% votes counted so far. Bass remained in first place with 235,180 votes (34.8%), followed by Pratt with 184,596 votes (27.3%) and Raman with 177,102 votes (26.2%).
Los Angeles County continues to count mail-in ballots marked on or before Election Day and received on Tuesday, June 9, drawing the attention of the Republican National Committee. Election results must only be counted within 30 days and confirmed by July 10.
CALIFORNIA TEST VOTES OUT IN POLITICS WORLD: ‘TOO SHAMEFUL’
Independent Spencer Pratt or Democrat Nithya Raman will advance to a November runoff against incumbent Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. (HIGHFIVE/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images; Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“The California primary ended on June 2, 2026; yet California is still counting votes,” the RNC website’s tracker counting down the seconds as the polls closed read.
“The state election system is a complete joke. The RNC is tracking every hour it takes for California to finish counting.”
The latest vote revision gave Raman another boost, as he received 23,514 votes in the latest batch, more than double Pratt’s 10,336 vote margin. That cut Pratt’s lead to 13,178 votes in one day and pushed the race for second place into uncertainty.
Pratt posted a meme on X criticizing the ongoing vote count in the race.
“I’m trying to figure out how the votes are counted in LA,” he wrote Saturday night.
Los Angeles Mayor Spencer Pratt has become the subject of controversy for his campaign ads, but pundits now expect his first bid to unseat the Democrat mayor to be over. (Highfive/Bauer-Griffin/GC Photos)
Under California’s first-two primary system, if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getters advance to the general election. The AP reported that Bass advanced to the running stage after finishing first in a crowded mayoral race, while Pratt and Raman continued to battle for the remaining November seat.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., pointed to California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom when discussing the delayed results.
“The question around the world is what happened in the California election? Well, I’ll tell you, it’s Gavin Newsom,” McCarthy told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “When Gavin Newsom was elected governor of California, you knew who was elected in a day to two days. Now it takes more than weeks, almost a month.”
“Why did we come here?” Makhathini continues. “Gavin changed a lot of election laws, you want to see what he did and why he did that?”
WATCH: L.A.’s left-wing mayor deals with TV host’s painful comments in heated mayoral debate
The slow count drew a lot of attention because the votes counted later had narrowed Pratt’s lead.
Longtime Democratic strategist Michael Trujillo told the California Post on Saturday that the trend points to Raman’s emergence, calling late voting “the norm” in California and telling critics to “go back to where you came from.”
“I was always a little jealous of the east coast election getting so much media attention and this app, of course I don’t mind,” he wrote on X. “The stupidity of these out of government analysts and reporters and bots and fake accounts are bringing to what is a truly DESPERATE process that is happening in Los Angeles and California is sickening.
“Go back to where you came from, thank you.”
Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman may win the No. 2 seat from Democrat Mayor Karen Bass and advance to the November runoff. (Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
SPENCER PRATT HITS KAREN BASS WORDS ABOUT HOMELESSNESS, MISTAKES A DEMOCRAT
Conservatives on the X criticized the chances of Pratt being locked out of the race.
“Spencer Pratt will probably be outdone by Nithya Raman on the far left today,” wrote Robby Starbuck at X. “This graph shows the countdown of Election Day until last night. “Nithya did this by suddenly winning the first of all new vote drops.
North Korea’s “election” is very self-respecting. Even they would find it absurd that a third party jumps to first place in all the polls DAYS after the election. It’s just funny.”
That post also brought the attention of X owner Elon Musk.
“The reason ID is banned in California (and New York) elections is to open up massive fraud,” Musk told X, in response to Starbuck’s post. “If you combine ID and email to vote, fraud is legal.”
SCOTUS CONSERVATIVES FIT TO DEFEAT LATE MAIL BALLOTS
Starbuck noted the historic run of Raman calculations performed.
“ChatGPT cannot find a single example of a 3rd candidate rising, days AFTER Election Day, to get past second place,” he wrote Sunday morning. “Couldn’t find 1 example in all of American history. That’s what happened with Nithya Raman & Spencer Pratt.
“Los Angeles has a third world election.”
Democrats are looking back at a huge edge in registered Democrat voters compared to Republicans, even if Pratt is running as an independent.
“WHEN SOMETHING CAN BE DESCRIBED BY A ASS OF CONTINUITY—OR ANY COLOR—THE COLOR ALWAYS WINS,” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., wrote of X. “These Registered Voters. Estimated number of Dems: 1,224, 224,737 Approx Republican.”
RNC FOOTBALL FOOTBALL BACK FOOTBALL CALIFORNIA MAIL RANKS AMONG NATIONAL FINANCES: ‘NO POWER’
The American people “want to see the integrity of the election,” McCarthy told host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.
“They want to see transparency and they want to see timely reporting: We had that in California,” said McCarthy, a former Republican House member from a blue state. “We were free from the rules regarding absentee ballots, but we had a responsibility to be accountable.”
“We stopped registering to vote 30 days before the election. That helps the registrants to know who will vote and the candidates,” he continued. “Now we have same-day voter, and you don’t have to show ID. Gavin changed the rules where he mails ballots to everyone. So he took away the choice for Californians to vote in person or vote absentee. Everyone gets mailed a ballot. But he didn’t clean the rolls. So that raises doubts in people’s minds.”
McCarthy noted that Raman’s Election Night disappointment was telling at first.
“If you look at the L.A. Mayor’s race, the person who came in third put it as a concession speech that night and cried, he got a lot of votes last fall,” McCarthy said. “So if he didn’t even believe that he could rise, that puts questions to the entire election itself. That’s why it brings doubt to people.”
President Donald Trump had thought, too, when the RNC pointed to the pending Supreme Court decision in Watson v. RNC on late vote count soon.
Watson’s decision could come before the end of June.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS PROGRAM
“.@POTUS is right,” the RNC’s Integrity Unit wrote on X. “That’s why the RNC has its boots on the ground and is fighting in the Supreme Court to stop votes received after Election Day from being counted. VOTE AND PROTECT IT!”
