The week before Los Angeles’ mayoral primary, a Spencer Pratt campaign van turned up on Hyperion Avenue, the road that separates the Los Feliz and Silver Lake neighborhoods on the city’s Eastside. Pratt’s campaign had become a social media hit over the prior month, fueled by a simple message, a barrage of A.I. slop videos, and Elon Musk’s X algorithm. But I had not seen a single piece of Pratt signage in this part of town.

Pratt’s van was in front of a cocktail bar with a wooden facade that doesn’t let passersby see inside. I pass it often but had tried to go only once, years ago, when some friends and I were turned away after the bouncer asked if we had any women with us. (We did not.) You may have seen the bar on the first episode of the recent HBO sitcom I Love LA, in the scene when Rachel Sennott’s character tells her friend, “They used to roofie people here, but then they fixed it.” (“Oh, bummer,” Odessa A’zion’s character replies.) I pulled up the bar’s Instagram page and found—what else?—an A.I.-made event flyer that depicted a blond woman running through a gauntlet of burning homeless encampments. A campaign “ballot party” was starting right then. I took the opportunity to find out what Pratt’s deal was, out there in the physical world.

It was a worthwhile use of an evening. On Tuesday, Pratt, a Republican running with the “Community Advocate” label below his name, faced off against Democratic establishment incumbent Karen Bass, progressive Councilwoman Nithya Raman, and a host of spoilers. It’s a jungle primary, in which the top two finishers advance to a head-to-head general election this fall. On Wednesday morning, the votes were still being counted, but Pratt looked likely to finish second—good enough for a runoff with Bass and a few more months in the limelight.

After my talks with his supporters, I believe I can now tell you why you’ll be hearing so much about him until November.

The party took place on a warm L.A. evening that hadn’t yet shifted to the usual crispness. The city’s May gray had stayed away. The taco stand about 100 yards off had its normal self-sustaining line. It was a beautiful night in an imperfect but beautiful city. Or at least I thought it was. Once inside the bar, I roamed around, talking to people who think Pratt is the last thing standing between L.A. and anarchy, damnation, or both.

This crowd had a specific vantage point. The group was almost entirely white, more so than the neighborhoods the bar straddles. Most people were between 30 and 50, wore nice clothes without red hats, and did not look as if they spent a great deal of time south of Interstate 10 except to go to the airport. (Same.) Homelessness is not always visible around here, but the area is 20 minutes from the spots where it’s most common. The attendees talked about downtown apocalyptically.

Not everyone, however, wanted to speak about it on the record. On the one hand, there were Pratt supporters who thought their ideas would get them in trouble with friends or bosses. They didn’t want to be quoted. On the other were those who were confident that a quiet majority was with them and that, soon, their views on homelessness and crime would have the validation of Pratt beating Bass and Raman. These supporters believed that the city had been brainwashed into supporting Democrats but would soon see Pratt’s light.

What was the source of that light, though? What did these people see in Pratt? And what does his relative popularity say about the state of our body politic that 10 years in Donald Trump’s America hasn’t already told us? The answers became clear over a few hours, and then a few days, of talking with them.

Although Pratt lists policy positions on a handful of subjects, he’s essentially running a single-issue campaign on homelessness—an issue that, for Pratt, allows him to hammer themes about public nuisance and disorder, crime, and a government letting it all happen. It’s impossible to overstate the extent to which this topic is Pratt’s whole ballgame, the only thing I heard about chatting with his backers. Everything else he talks about ties back to it.

Two things are true of Los Angeles’ homelessness. One is that the area has an extraordinary number of homeless people: some 72,000 in L.A. County as of last summer. The other is that unsheltered homelessness (people in streets, in cars, or squatting in buildings) has fallen in the most recent measurements, which cover about the first two years of Bass’ term. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s survey pegs the decline at about 17.5 percent within city limits during that period. The situation is awful, impossible to miss, and improving.

Pratt’s campaign is premised on the “improving” part not being real. His argument is not just that L.A. is the country’s biggest hub for homelessness, but that it’s being swallowed whole by it. He says Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom “make up stats” and........

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