Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman has overtaken reality television star Spencer Pratt in the latest Associated Press vote tally for the city's mayoral primary, but the AP has not called the race, and the margin sits at a razor-thin 0.4 percentage points with ballots still being processed weeks after Election Day.
Pratt, a Republican, had led earlier in the day before Raman, a Democrat, pulled ahead by more than 3,000 votes, Fox News reported. Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass has already secured her spot in the November runoff as she seeks a second term. The fight now is over who faces her.
Under Los Angeles' nonpartisan mayoral election rules, if no candidate wins an outright majority in the primary, the top two finishers advance to a November runoff. That structure means the Raman-Pratt margin, roughly 3,000 votes and still shifting, will determine whether a Republican even makes the general election ballot in America's second-largest city.
The California primary ended on June 2, 2026. Yet here we are, well past that date, and the state is still counting. The reason is structural: every active registered voter in California receives a mail ballot. Ballots postmarked by Election Day may arrive up to seven days later, meaning Los Angeles County continues processing ballots received through June 9.
Election workers must then verify signatures and work through late-arriving mail. County officials face a July 2 deadline to complete final official results. The secretary of state will certify those results by July 10.
That timeline means a full month passes between the day voters cast their last ballots and the day anyone can say with certainty who won. For a city reeling from wildfires, rising crime, and a homelessness crisis that has defined the Bass tenure, the delay leaves the political future in limbo.
The prolonged count has drawn sharp criticism from the Republican National Committee, which launched a website tracker to monitor the process. The RNC's tracker carries blunt language: "The California primary ended on June 2, 2026; yet California is still counting ballots." It adds: "The state's election system is a complete joke. The RNC is tracking every hour it takes California to finish the count."
That frustration extends beyond party committees. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, speaking on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures," placed the blame squarely on Governor Gavin Newsom and the election laws enacted under his watch.
"The question to the rest of the world is what happened to California elections? Well, I'll tell you, it's Gavin Newsom. 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."
McCarthy pressed the point further, asking why the state arrived at this situation and asserting that Newsom "changed a number of election laws in which you want to see is what did he do and why did he cause it?"
The specific laws McCarthy referenced were not detailed. But the broader complaint is straightforward: a system that mails ballots to every registered voter, allows a week of post-Election Day arrivals, and then takes another three weeks to verify and tally those ballots is a system that invites confusion, and erodes public confidence in the outcome, regardless of which party benefits.
Election integrity has been a recurring flashpoint in American politics, and the California model represents everything critics on the right find objectionable. A state that once produced same-night results now asks voters to wait a month. The pattern of election-night uncertainty reshaping political races is hardly unique to Los Angeles, but California's version is the most drawn-out in the country.
Spencer Pratt's candidacy has been one of the more unusual entries in recent American politics. Best known for the MTV reality series "The Hills," Pratt entered the race as a Republican in a city where the GOP barely registers at the municipal level. That he led the count at any point, let alone held a position to potentially face an incumbent Democratic mayor in a runoff, speaks to the depth of voter dissatisfaction with the status quo in Los Angeles.
Pratt and other Republicans have decried the ongoing ballot count. The frustration is understandable: a candidate who led on election night, or even earlier in the same day's tally, watching that lead evaporate as mail ballots trickle in over subsequent weeks faces a particular kind of political torment.
The race also attracted attention from the entertainment world. Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel took aim at Pratt on his program. Pratt responded by sharing a screencap from what Fox News described as an embarrassing moment from Kimmel's past as an entertainer. The exchange underscored the unusual cultural crosscurrents running through a contest that pits a reality TV personality against a progressive city council member for the right to challenge an embattled incumbent.
The broader Republican landscape has seen its own share of sudden political shakeups in recent months, but few have carried the sheer novelty of a former reality star threatening to crack open a Democratic stronghold's mayoral race.
Karen Bass secured her runoff position, but the identity of her opponent matters enormously. A Raman-Bass runoff would pit two Democrats against each other, a familiar dynamic in deep-blue Los Angeles that would likely produce a contest fought over progressive policy priorities with little ideological daylight between the candidates.
A Pratt-Bass runoff would be a different animal entirely. It would force a conversation about one-party governance in Los Angeles, about the city's response to the wildfire disaster, about homelessness policy, and about whether voters are angry enough to hand a Republican the microphone on the biggest municipal stage in the West.
That possibility, however slim, explains why the slow count matters. Every batch of verified mail ballots shifts the margin. And in a race separated by just 3,000 votes and 0.4 percentage points, the outcome hinges on the very process Republicans are criticizing, a process that won't produce certified results until July 10.
Political upheaval has become a recurring theme in races across the country, from high-profile removals to candidates abruptly exiting contests. The Los Angeles race fits the pattern of a political environment where nothing is settled until the last procedural step is complete.
Set aside the personalities for a moment. The real issue in Los Angeles, and across California, is a vote-counting apparatus that tests the patience of voters, candidates, and the public alike. A system designed for maximum ballot access has produced minimum speed and maximum uncertainty.
McCarthy's critique, whatever its partisan motivation, lands on a real point. When a state moves from election-night clarity to month-long ambiguity, it doesn't just inconvenience campaigns. It creates a window in which trust erodes, conspiracy theories flourish, and the losing side, whichever side that turns out to be, has weeks to build a grievance narrative before a single official result is posted.
California officials will argue the system ensures every legal vote is counted. Fair enough. But ensuring every vote is counted and ensuring public confidence in the count are not the same thing. A process that takes five weeks to resolve a city election is a process that has lost the thread.
The pattern of political fallout from contested outcomes is well established. What remains to be seen is whether the fallout in Los Angeles will be confined to the mayoral race or whether it accelerates a broader reckoning with how California runs its elections.
As of the latest AP tally, Raman holds a lead of more than 3,000 votes. The AP has not called the race. County officials have until July 2 to finalize results. The secretary of state has until July 10 to certify them. And voters in Los Angeles, a city facing real crises that demand real leadership, are left waiting.
The November runoff, whenever its participants are officially determined, will test whether Los Angeles residents are content with the direction their city has taken under one-party rule. If Pratt somehow survives the count, that test gets a lot more interesting. If Raman holds on, the city gets a safe, intra-party contest, and the kind of predictable outcome that comfortable political establishments prefer.
A state that can't tell its largest city who's running for mayor five weeks after the primary ended has no business lecturing anyone else about how elections should work.
