The TV ad drought in the mayoral race

Good morning, it’s Thursday, May 14. Expect plenty of May Gray, today and into next week, until morale improves.

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.”

In a new L.A. Material report, contributor Maeve Reston unpacks this year’s TV ad drought and what it says about the race, along with Pratt’s viral video strategy.

In one of his flashy campaign ads, mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt stands in front of an Airstream trailer parked on a burned out lot and declares: “This is where I live.” The ad contrasts that with sun-soaked images of Nithya Raman’s “$3 million mansion” and Mayor Karen Bass’ official city residence, Getty House in Windsor Square. 

But TMZ this week reported that Pratt has, for the last month, been living at the Hotel Bel-Air, where the cheapest room starts at $1,500 per night. 

After the story was published, Pratt joined TMZ Live and pushed back against the idea that he’s living at the hotel: “I don't live at the hotel Bel Air. I don't live in the Airstream. I don't live in Santa Barbara. I don't have a house,” he said. “They burned it down.” 

Pratt also said he has been staying in temporary housing and a hotel because of threats. "I'm at a hotel because these psychopaths are messaging me every day they’re going to kill me,” he said.

LAUREL AND HARDYWARE: L.A.’s latest luxury grocer, Laurel Supply, has quietly opened in West Hollywood but unlike its sister restaurant and namesake Laurel Hardware, there’s no vintage facade hiding its ultra-luxe interior. Eater LA reports that the Erewhon competitor resembles “something between Nobu and an alien spaceship.”

HAMMERING THE FESTIVAL CIRCUIT: L.A. Times awards columnist Glenn Whipp unpacks how the Cannes Film Festival supplanted the fall festivals as the place to launch an Oscar campaign. Meanwhile, Deadline reports that studios are withholding summer blockbusters from Cannes following disastrous rollouts of flimsy tentpoles like Furiosa and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE: The NYT has a lovely profile of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s Tim Bovard — the last full-time museum taxidermist in the country, whose exacting work requires an encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world. 

SCREWED TOGETHER: Stephen Cloobeck, the timeshare magnate and failed California gubernatorial candidate, was arrested Tuesday morning in West Hollywood and charged with three felonies and a misdemeanor related to tampering with witnesses in the case against his Penthouse Pet fiancé, reports the California Post. His campaign, which ended in November 2025 after he polled at 0.5%, was most notable for the early-2000s-pop-punk-style anthem, “California Get A CLOO.”

MEASURE TWICE, QUIT… TWICE: One month after stepping down as president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, Teresa Sánchez-Gordon told The LA Local that she is leaving the police oversight board entirely, citing unspecified threats to her and her family.

For today’s peek inside our subscriber-only Discord server, @cramjones posted a bike path stencil in #transit-and-transportation that doesn’t quite look up to code:

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “California Poem” by Johnny Cash.

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