TMZ founder Harvey Levin, during an episode of 2 Angry Men, revealed that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass refused to appear on TMZ for a one-on-one debate with Republican candidate Spencer Pratt. While Bass reportedly said she was too busy, Levin argued that the real reason she declined the appearance was because she is terrified of the Republican candidate.
🚨 HOLY SMOKES. Karen Bass COLLUDED to get Nithya Raman running for LA mayor because she's terrified of Spencer Pratt, and now privately ADMITS Pratt is surging
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 18, 2026
Bass now desperately hopes to force RAMAN into the runoff, because only the top 2 vote getters win
SPENCER WILL DEFY… pic.twitter.com/JZt1DoDyTF
"I spoke to somebody in Karen Bass's office, the mayor's office, because we were trying to get her on when we were gonna put Spencer on and just kind of talk this out. And she wouldn't go on, or she was busy or whatever," Levin said. He went on to explain that Mayor Bass is currently terrified of facing Spencer Pratt and is hoping that Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman will be her opponent in the general election.
"So look, this is gonna be a runoff. Everybody thinks somebody is gonna be elected mayor. No, nobody's gonna be elected mayor this time," he added.
You have to get 50 percent plus in order to become mayor in a primary. Neither will get 50 percent. Karen Bass is now at around 30 percent. Spencer's at around 22 percent. The city councilwoman who is also running around 17, 18 percent, depending on what you look at. So nobody's gonna get 50 percent. So there's gonna be a runoff.
What I found interesting was that I was told something that I am now confident of that what Bass is hoping is that the other person, the city councilwoman, is going to be her runoff opponent and not Spencer Pratt. That she is more afraid of Spencer Pratt than she is her former employee who is now running against her. That she acknowledges the traction he has gotten and she is much more fearful that he will win than that he'll come in second as opposed to her.
"You will find out before our next episode how I know that, but that is categorically 100 percent absolutely true," Levin added. "She does not want anything to do with Spencer Pratt in a runoff one-on-one. They're doing whatever they can to get Nitya to be in the runoff. They tried to use me to do that by putting her on instead of Bass against Spencer. And I figured out what they were doing, and it's very clear to me they're more worried about Spencer."
This comes as Pratt has burst onto the Los Angeles political scene with a kind of passion for reforming city politics that hasn’t been seen in years.
Not only has he run an effective online campaign against the city’s Democratic leadership and used the city itself as a kind of walking campaign advertisement, but during the one opportunity he had to debate both Democratic candidates, he effectively held up a mirror to Bass and Raman. He argued that the city’s deteriorating conditions were a direct reflection of its current leadership. The performance was so effective that both candidates later resorted to name-calling in interviews and even dropped out of a mayoral debate last week without explanation.
Pratt is still trailing Mayor Bass, although her lead has narrowed to the double digits, as California Republicans remain hopeful that they may see legitimate political change in the near future.