What Mayoral Ad Campaign?

FORGET THE KIDS OF STRANGER THINGS or the special agents of NCIS. If you owned a TV four years ago, a single character almost certainly dominated your screen in late spring 2022: Developer and mayoral candidate Rick Caruso's patrician face was ubiquitous, looming through every commercial break. In the midst of a heated primary, Caruso was dropping at least a half-million dollars a week on broadcast and cable television ads. By the time the June election rolled around, he had spent a cool $23 million on TV ads.

There were also a smattering of TV ads in support of then-Rep. Karen Bass — who would ultimately defeat Caruso in the November general election — but her supporters were spending far less.

As Bass runs for re-election this year, TV ad spending is so minimal that L.A. voters could be forgiven for barely noticing there’s a mayoral race going on, at least until the past week or so. 

Facing voters who are nursing deep frustration about the state of the city, Bass has been raising money at a slower clip than during her 2022 campaign while her leading rivals, Councilwoman Nithya Raman and former reality star Spencer Pratt are primarily channeling their efforts into social media (and in Raman’s case, digital ads).

“It’s night and day,” Sheri Sadler, a veteran Los Angeles strategic media buyer, said of this year’s ad environment, compared to 2022. But it’s not just the lack of a self-funding billionaire in the race: Sadler noted that the media landscape is changing dramatically as voters cut the cord and change their TV viewing habits. “Everyone’s trying to get clever to get seen more. The media dollar doesn’t go very far.”

Caruso’s ad bombardment (which escalated to $3 to $4 million a week in the final stretch of the runoff) also showed the limits of the form: Bass still bested him by nearly 10 points. 

A key difference this cycle from past Los Angeles mayoral campaigns is that Angelenos have “an incredibly unpopular incumbent running against a field of incredibly unknown challengers,” said Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at the University of Southern California and UC-Berkeley.

“Bass’s fundraising is just as important a sign as to her vulnerabilities as her poll numbers,” Schnur said. “An incumbent ought to be rolling in the dough.”

Still, Bass’s comparatively larger war chest has given her greater visibility on broadcast than any of her competitors. Between late April — when Bass first went on air — and this week, the Democratic mayor had spent about $426,000 on ads, according to public filings with the Federal Communications Commission, allowing her to target voters watching local news, shows like American Idol, Next Level Chef, and Jeopardy, and the recent NBA Conference semi-finals.

Raman and Pratt have not aired any television ads. A third rival, tech entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist Adam Miller, has loaned his campaign at least $4 million. But so far, he has only aired a sprinkling of TV ads, including around the recent televised mayoral debate where he did not qualify to make it onto the stage.

Pratt, a Republican who built an enormous social media following after he lost his home in the fires in the Pacific Palisades, is testing whether viral social media ads can vault him into a runoff with Bass. Over-the-top, AI-assisted videos amplifying his message have bounced across the internet and generated a torrent of press coverage — evidence of a shifting media ecosystem where non-traditional methods might attract more eyeballs than a standard broadcast ad. (It’s not yet clear how many of those viewers are ballot-casting Angelenos). 

Pratt’s effort is being boosted by independent creators like filmmaker Charles Curran who has proved adept at churning out attention-grabbing digital videos created with AI. One depicted Pratt as a Batman-like superhero swooping in to save Los Angeles from champagne-swilling liberals and masked ninjas repping Democratic Socialists of America. A new ad this week from Curran on social media shows an AI-generated Bass talking up her accomplishments in front of flame-engulfed streets and a needle-strewn playground.  

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani showed that a strong social media campaign can be an effective complement to traditional paid media, “but there has yet to be evidence that it can be a replacement,” Schnur noted, adding that the aggressive social media campaign could help Pratt attract donors. 

Early indications look positive for Pratt: Since his attention-grabbing May 6 televised debate performance, Pratt has pulled in more than $370,000 in donations. Bass pulled in about $54,000 while Raman reported donations of just over $30,000 during the same period. (Those totals only represent large contributions at or above $1000; a full accounting will become public in the coming weeks.)

Raman has also aggressively used social media — sometimes strolling the streets of LA or empty studio lots — to draw attention to her policy positions. Her feed has played up candid moments and the events that she is doing to appeal to younger voters, including a Harley Quinn celebrity table read tonight, a recent comedy night and a dance party at the Silver Lake Lounge. The videos have often taken viewers behind the scenes, including a door-knocking excursion where she pivoted into fluent Spanish to engage with a voter. (That “voter” was Frankie Quiñones, a well-known LA comedian).

Some platforms, including Google, Meta and Snapchat, release data about what candidates spend on their platforms. Raman has been matching Bass’s digital ad spending, according to the California Ads Transparency Project maintained by Sacramento-based data guru Paul Mitchell. Mitchell’s tracker shows that Bass has spent between $90,000 and $105,000 this year on those platforms. Raman was competitive with Bass’s spending starting in April and May when she put between $95,000 and $116,000 in digital ads. Pratt trailed both of them with a $7,000 to $9,000 digital ad spend. (The full picture of spending on digital ads won’t be clear until campaign finance reports are completed later this month). 

Some of the most notable spending in the race has been through independent expenditures. The Los Angeles Police Protective League has spent about $720,000 on digital ads attacking Raman’s more liberal stances on homeless encampments and housing. At the current pace of spending, the PPL will have spent more than a million dollars on their digital campaign against Raman by June, according to a strategist familiar with the group’s plans. The PPL also began a new $200,000 effort this week attacking a fifth contender, community organizer Rae Huang, as “DSA Rae” playing up her membership in Democratic Socialists of America. (Between her own fundraising and matching funds, Raman is on track to spend as much as $2 million — plowing much of that into her own digital ads, including those on platforms such as  Amazon, Hulu, Youtube and others.)

The L.A. County Federation of Labor made waves with a new ad released last weekend purportedly attacking Pratt, but actually conveying the Republican’s plans to increase police and more aggressively manage the city’s homelessness crisis — which many saw as an effort to ensure that he becomes Bass’s runoff opponent to give her a better chance of winning in the general election.

But the effort by the mayoral candidates to communicate with voters hasn’t impressed veteran media strategists like Bill Carrick, an advisor to former Los Angeles mayors Eric Garcetti, Jim Hahn and Richard Riordan.

“The budgets are lower than usual by a long shot,” Carrick said. “They just don’t have the money.”

Maeve Reston is a national political reporter who has covered politics for more than two decades at publications including the Washington Post, CNN, and the Los Angeles Times.