Heidi Montag, Spencer Pratt and California state Senate candidate Nico Ruderman during an episode of The Fame Game With Heidi and Spencer. YouTube screen grab.

I don’t know Spencer Pratt. I’ve only met him once, very briefly. He attended a rally I helped organize in the Pacific Palisades on August 23. We were there to voice our opposition to a bill then making its way through Sacramento that would empower wealthy developers to build mini residential and “mixed use” high rises in suburbs and single family neighborhoods (more on that bill, which subsequently passed by the slimmest possible margins, presently).

As grassroots advocates with virtually no budget going up against the most powerful interests in the state, we were grateful he was there, amplifying our voices to his 1.1 million Instagram followers and 2.3 million TikTok followers. I’ve also communicated indirectly with him a handful of times, offering talking points about the bill, which he also outspokenly opposes. He has been a relentless advocate for the Palisades and against bad legislation, which is why I find a story about him in yesterday’s New York Times so execrable and in need of rebuttal and correction.

Though he doesn’t pretend to be a policy wonk, he’s leveraged his platform into one of the most visible when it comes to the fire and rebuilding, if not the most. Is he right all the time? Of course not. None of us is. That’s not the point. It’s the message he carries. To his credit, Pratt doesn’t seem to particularly care whether people like him. Or perhaps more accurately, he doesn’t care if political hacks like California Governor Gavin Newsom like him.

Personally, I think Newsom’s contempt is a badge of honor. On most issues, you’re doing something wrong if he agrees with you. For Pratt, maybe it’s also something of an instinctual holdover from his fame-making turn on “The Hills,” in which he played a louse of a boyfriend. After all, bad guys tend to get more attention than good guys, as even Gavin himself has recognized recently in his (rather pathetic) co-opting of some of President Donald Trump’s more noxious impulses. In contrast, Pratt’s bad guy is actually the good guy here.

If you can’t beat ’em….

In any event, Pratt is definitely a contrarian. He’s gotten their attention, and he’s using it. Like most hit pieces, yesterday’s starts innocuously enough, drawing the reader in. The Times’s Conor Dougherty recalls a visit to the burned property of Pratt and his wife, pop singer Heidi Montag, as the couple prepared for an episode of their podcast, “The Fame Game With Spencer and Heidi.” Since the fire destroyed their home, along with some 7,000 others, they’ve converted the ruins into a backdrop for the show, complete with a retaining wall painted bright pink with large white letters spelling “Heidiwood,” the title of Montag’s most recent album.

“It was late August,” Dougherty writes. “The air tasted like batteries, and the ground was scarred with burn marks.” He doesn’t mention whether the air was also thick with anticipation. This is what happens when the average reporter takes a swing at the literary. It’s anyone’s guess what batteries taste like (is he talking Duracell or Tesla?) or what said flavor conveys about the scene. Also, if you’ve been to the Palisades in the last few months, you know there aren’t a lot of burn marks left on the ground. But hey, bad poetry isn’t going to write itself.

It takes a few paragraphs for him to get to the red meat of his narrative, which seeks to portray Pratt as wrongheaded, attention seeking, and possibly driven by less than altruistic impulses, “Like most everything with Pratt, his venture into politics comes with a product tie-in.” Which is another way of saying that Pratt has a podcast. No matter that you can head over to the California Democratic Party’s online store and grab, unironically, a $65 Nancy Pelosi hoodie. Even the Democratic Socialists of America, they of the call to end capitalism, have an online store where you can snag a $75 DSA banner for your next riot, at which you can also wear your $30 “Abolish ICE” t-shirt. Somehow, though, the fact that a former reality star and his pop star wife offer some truck along with their commentary is grounds for a dig. Keep that perspective in mind as you peruse Doughtery’s drivel.

From there the piece is off to the races. “The blurring of activism and merch is one reason Pratt’s detractors portray him as a yapping opportunist who riles people up instead of looking for solutions.” One would think that an allegedly serious journalist at an allegedly serious outlet like The New York Times could come up with more parnassian invective than “yapping opportunist.” One would be wrong.

The unmitigated gall of Pratt and Montag, out there making a living. Screen shot from the latter’s merch site.

Dougherty’s next indictment is that Pratt has become a MAGA Republican mouthpiece. The comment section on his X/Twitter is “a virtual cheering section of accounts that identify as ‘MAGA.’” Because, of course, a man is defined by the comments section. Pratt and Montage also have hosted out-of-state Republican lawmakers on their podcast.

Which is where Dougherty’s smears do a great disservice by obscuring an important reality. With vanishingly few exceptions, California’s Democrat-dominated political class are in absolute lockstep on virtually every issue. They sing from the same hymnal, in the same key, to the same tempo. It’s political auto-tuning. To point out that those selfsame officials neglected wildfire preparedness and prevention for decades is heresy. The fact is, oftentimes Republicans and conservatives, and more conservative media outlets, are the only ones who offer alternative points of view. It’s effective: The fact that the New York Times felt the need to run this piece in the first place is proof. If Pratt hadn’t been on Fox News and interviewing Republican lawmakers, the Gray Lady wouldn’t pay him any mind. Pot, meet kettle.

Dougherty’s next attack is that Pratt is “myopically focused” on the Palisades. This is like accusing New Yorkers of having been “myopically focused” on lower Manhattan after 9/11. Pratt has “resisted requests to post about other disasters such as the Maui fires, Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and even the Eaton fire in Altadena.” That is, he’s sticking to a disaster, a place, and issues with which he’s familiar. To hear The New York Times, Pratt ought to be winging his way around the country and sticking his nose in other people’s tragedies. Presumably while selling merch.

Dougherty exposes his own lack of credibility when he claims that “many people” (that old chestnut) view the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire as “the same fire.” The Palisades and Altadena are 30 miles from each other. Find me one person in Los Angeles who believes the fires were “the same.” Just one. If you can, I’ll buy you a Nancy Pelosi hoodie.

He gets other facts wrong. On the day he visited Pratt’s and Montag’s property, they were interviewing California state Senate candidate Nico Ruderman. Ruderman has been an outspoken opponent of SB 79 and the state’s efforts to eliminate single family neighborhoods (disclosure: I work on Ruderman’s campaign).

Dougherty writes, “The California legislature had been debating a bill called SB 79 that would allow apartment buildings as high as nine stories in neighborhoods within a half-mile of major transit stops.” He’s wrong again. In fact, SB 79 allows buildings up to 75 feet, or seven to eight stories, within a quarter mile of certain defined transit stops and 65 feet, or six to seven stories, within a half mile. With additional incentives and concessions, including the onerous “builder’s remedy,” those buildings can be up to 150 and 130 feet, respectively. Once the bill becomes law, in affected cities developers will be able to buy single family homes, demolish them, and build those seven to fifteen story towers. There won’t be a thing neighbors or local governments can do, other than live with three or four or five years of earsplitting construction and the collective thousands of truck trips, then enjoy the new Death Star on the block when it’s done. This is reality.

Mind you, Dougherty is the Times’s expert on housing policy, and he lives in California. His breezy inaccuracies regarding one of the most consequential housing bills in decades are more telling than his actual writing. He goes full advocate: “The legislation wouldn’t apply to the Palisades, which does not have such a stop, but for weeks Pratt had suggested on social media that it would.” Again, he ignores (or doesn’t understand) the nuance. 

Bear with me as we get into the weeds for a moment: SB 79 allows developers to build those small high rises within a half or quarter mile of the intersection of two or more bus routes that have a 20 minute headway during peak hours. In other words, six buses an hour along thoroughfares that carry thousands of vehicles an hour constitutes “high quality transit” around which thousands of new apartments can be built. The only other requirement is that some or all of those routes must include dedicated bus lanes — those red “bus only” lanes that are proliferating nationwide.

Currently, two bus lines run along most of Sunset Boulevard through the Palisades, Santa Monica Big Blue Bus number 9 and Los Angeles Metro number 602. The former has dedicated lanes through part of downtown Santa Monica before it heads up the hill to the Palisades, so it already qualifies. The latter is going to get dedicated lanes in the near future, around UCLA in Westwood. Mind you, under SB 79 transit lines qualify even if they don’t yet exist but are planned. Presto bango, you have yourself an SB 79 corridor. Additionally, the California Coastal Commission is considering a proposal to turn part of the parking lot at Gladstone’s restaurant at the intersection of Sunset and Pacific Coast Highway into a multi-route bus station, which would serve additional bus lines.

Spencer Pratt is right: How to “SB 79-ize” a community. Click the image to view the plan.

In other words, Pratt is accurate when he says that SB 79 “would” apply to the Palisades. All that’s required is a few cans of red paint and a couple hours’ work. That’s not just the conclusion of your humble scribe. A lot of very smart people with extensive experience in zoning and land use agree. In the Palisades, the proposed bus terminal at Sunset and PCH would be the metaphorical neighborhood kill shot. Nevertheless, Dougherty quotes SB 79’s author, California state Senator Scott Wiener (D—San Francisco, because of course) who called Pratt’s assertion a “bald faced lie.” Which is pretty rich coming from the likes of Wiener, a political creature who lies as easily as normal people breathe.

Speaking personally, I was deeply involved in the statewide grassroots effort to defeat SB 79. As noted, we came within one vote, which is almost unheard of in Sacramento. If anything the bill, which Newsom is all but assuredly going to sign into law, is even worse than what Pratt describes. If anything, he’s toning it down.

Meanwhile, ask yourself who you believe: Wiener, who is well known to be an errand boy for big real estate and big finance, or Pratt, a guy who lost his home in a wildfire and is mad as hell about it? It’s revealing that Dougherty is more eager to slam a dissenting podcaster and former reality star than one of the most powerful politicians in the state, who’s already running for Congress. Gosh, who d’ya think is a better potential long term source to whom a reporter would want cozy up? This isn’t the first time Dougherty has maligned a neighborhood activist.

The “Nothing Could Have Been Done” Lie

With unwavering credulity and zero journalistic skepticism, Dougherty parrots the establishment line: The Palisades Fire was “nearly impossible to plan for.” A once in a century event. Winds hampered firefight efforts. Without a scintilla of curiosity he reports that, according to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the fact that the biggest reservoir in the area was empty when the fire started “did not affect the firefighting effort.”

What shameless bollocks. City officials failed at literally every step leading up to and during the January wildfires. According to the city’s own documents, part of the reason the Santa Ynez Reservoir was built in the first place was to provide water in the event of fire. DWP left it empty for nearly a year during one of the driest periods on record, over an $80,000 repair. LAFD leadership failed to pre-deploy firefighting resources to the Palisades, despite the fact that there had been a fire barely a week earlier in the same spot the Palisades Fire ignited. LAFD Station 23 is just a few minutes from the ignition site, yet during a red flag warning the first firefighters didn’t arrive on scene for nearly half an hour. The first aerial assault took nearly an hour. Leadership has yet to be called to account for these failures.

I was in the Palisades on the evening of January 7, about nine hours into the fire, helping two neighbors douse their homes with garden hoses. Despite all the missteps and missed opportunities on the part of city officials, as of 7pm on that first night the vast majority of houses were still standing. Yet in 90 minutes I saw a total of two fire trucks. Two. A resident and his son in the Sunset Mesa neighborhood of the Palisades saved my friends’ home and a dozen others using garden hoses, while the rest of the neighborhood burned. Another resident similarly saved his home and others. Several residents hired private firefighting companies in advance of the fire, including former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso.

In the face of these realities, Dougherty dutifully reports that nothing could have been done. “Pratt has no patience for complicated realities in which there are many factors and no clear villain.” I’m sorry, and excuse the language, but that’s absolute fucking bullshit. Even accounting for the role of climate change, the Palisades fire was not complicated. There were not many factors. And there most assuredly were, and are, villains: Karen Bass, who in the face of historic fire dangers jetted off on a literal ego trip to a presidential inauguration in Ghana, LAFD Chief Kristen Crowley, who failed to pre-deploy assets or to hold 1,000 personnel on station the night before the fire, and LADWP President Janisse Quinones, whose incompetence let a crucial water supply sit bone dry. Newsom shares the blame as well, for cutting funds for brush clearance and all but eliminating controlled burns.

As much as Dougherty and the New York Times might wish otherwise, these waters aren’t muddy. They are crystal clear. That they are complicit in furthering the establishment’s lies is shameful. It’s cowardly.

At the end of his bowel movement, Dougherty chronicles Pratt’s recent trip to Washington, D.C., where he met with Republican lawmakers and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner. Dougherty suggests that Pratt is being “used” by opportunistic Republicans eager to land some blows on one of their favorite targets, California.

It’s a shame it didn’t occur to him that far more consequential people are not going to Washington, starting with Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom.

Consider donating to the all aspect report!