analyst

Living outside the community they want to represent can be a handicap for political candidates, but it’s not likely to be a problem for Los Angeles mayoral hopeful Spencer Pratt, who until recently was living in Carpinteria in Santa Barbara County, analysts say.

That’s because Pratt’s home burned in the January 2025 Palisades fire, making him a sympathetic figure among many voters — especially those living in his Westside base, they say.

“I don’t think this is going to be electorally consequential,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, a former Los Angeles County supervisor and L.A. City Council member who now runs the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “He’s a victim of the Palisades fire that doesn’t have a home to live in because it burned down.”

Pratt filed to run for mayor in February and was in second place behind Mayor Karen Bass in a recent poll by the Luskin school. He was certified by the Los Angeles city clerk on March 2 as one of 14 candidates in the June 2 primary election.

While some observers have raised questions about his eligibility, a state memorandum following the fires said that voters who were temporarily displaced from their homes can use their prior address as their permanent residence as long as they “intend to return” in the future.

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt currently resides in a private community in Carpinteria, Calif.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Michael Sanchez, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, said this also applies to candidates.

“In situations where a candidate has been temporarily displaced (such as the 2025 wildfires), their eligibility to run for office is not impacted, provided they maintain domicile in their district,” Sanchez said in a statement.

He explained that domicile is determined by a person’s primary residence and their intent to return to that residence. “Temporary relocation during rebuilding or recovery does not, by itself, change a person’s domicile.”

The Times asked the L.A. city clerk’s office last week about Pratt’s residency and eligibility.

“We cannot comment on the specifics of a candidate’s address due to confidentiality. Any matter concerning a candidate’s eligibility or residency, such as this situation, can be formally challenged through the court,” said Josue Marcus, a spokesperson for the city clerk’s office.

Any potential challenge to Pratt’s eligibility based on residency would turn on the question of whether he had intent to return, said Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Marymount University law professor. “Those are tricky inquiries because it depends on someone’s state of mind,” she said.

Pratt and his campaign aides didn’t respond to requests for comment. Pratt released a video Monday, following inquiries from The Times, defending his decision to move to Carpinteria but saying he now intends to live in a trailer placed on his burned-out lot in Pacific Palisades.

The city of Los Angeles sprawls across roughly 500 square miles, creating logistical hurdles if nothing else for a candidate seeking citywide office from a remote location, noted Democratic political consultant Mike Trujillo.

“Anyone that has done the drive from San Pedro to Sylmar knows that L.A. is a big place,” said Trujillo, who isn’t affiliated with any of the candidates in the June 2 mayoral primary. “To add another hour and a half to the drive is not advantageous if you’re trying to campaign in every corner of the city.”

Pratt, a former reality TV star, has millions of followers on social media, but Trujillo said that Pratt will need to show a strong presence in the community to wage a successful campaign.

Pratt is a Republican running in a Democrat-majority city. Developer Geoffrey H. Palmer, a major campaign donor to President Trump, plans to host a reception for Pratt at his Beverly Hills home April 28, according to a document the Pratt campaign filed with the city Ethics Commission.

The event is being organized by Trey Kozacik, who also organized a Trump fundraiser in Los Angeles in 2019.

The UCLA Luskin poll released this month showed Pratt with the support of 11% of likely voters, behind Bass with 25% and ahead of City Council member Nithya Raman with 9%.

Mayoral candidate Adam Miller, who polled at 3% in the survey, said Pratt’s party affiliation is his biggest hurdle to winning the mayoral race.

“I sympathize with Spencer for losing his home and feeling outrage toward the city, but he is not a viable candidate. It doesn’t matter where he lives, a Republican hasn’t been elected mayor in 30 years in this city, and he isn’t going to change that now,” said Miller, a tech executive.

Others say party affiliation is less of an issue.

“This is a nonpartisan race,” said Roxanne Hoge, the chair of the Los Angeles County Republican Party. “There’s no letter accompanying anyone’s name. … I personally support him because he’s an intelligent alternative.”

Some think Pratt will also hold appeal for some Democratic voters.

“There are people I speak to who I know to be Democrats who really, really like him,” said Maryam Zar, who heads the Palisades Recovery Coalition. “To the extent that people are disappointed in this recovery, they pin their hopes on Spencer. That’s not a bad place for him to be.”

Pro-Iran groups have used artificial intelligence to create internet memes in English to try to shape the narrative during the war against the U.S. and Israel and foster opposition to it.

Analysts say the memes appear to be coming from groups linked to the government in Tehran and are part of a strategy of leveraging its limited resources to inflict damage on the U.S., even indirectly. That includes how Iran has used attacks and threats to control the flow of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and maintain a stranglehold on the world’s economy. A ceasefire raised hopes Wednesday of halting hostilities, but many issues remained unresolved.

“This is a propaganda war for them,” Neil Lavie-Driver, an AI researcher at the University of Cambridge, said, referring to Iran. “Their goal is to sow enough discontent with the conflict as to eventually force the West to cave in, so it is massively important to them.”

It’s not the first time memes have been used in a conflict, and they have evolved to include AI images in recent years. AI imagery bombarded Ukrainians after the Russian invasion in 2022. Last year, the term “AI slop” became widely used to describe the glut of imperfect images posted online during the Israel-Iran war to try to destroy the country’s nuclear program.

In the conflict that began Feb. 28 with joint U.S.-Israel strikes, the memes have used well-honed cartoons that lambast U.S. officials.

The memes are steeped in American culture

The memes are fluent not just in English but in American culture and trolling. Published on various social platforms, they are racking up millions of views — though it’s not clear how much influence they have had.

They have portrayed President Trump as old, out of step and internationally isolated. They have referenced bruising on the back of Trump’s right hand that prompted speculation about his health; infighting in Trump’s MAGA base; and U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s fiery confirmation hearing, among other things.

“They’re using popular culture against the No. 1 pop culture country, the United States,” said Nancy Snow, a scholar who has written more than a dozen books on propaganda.

The pro-Iran images circulating online include a series that uses the style of the “Lego” animated movies. In one, an Iranian military commander raps, “You thought you ran the globe, sitting on your throne. Now we turning every base into a bed of stone,” as Trump falls into a bullseye built of “Epstein files,” the U.S. government’s investigative records on disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Analysts believe groups making the memes are cooperating with the government

The animations show levels of sophistication and internet access that indicate ties to government offices, said Mahsa Alimardani, a director of Witness, a human rights group working on AI video evidence.

“If you’re able to have the bandwidth needed to generate content like that and upload it, you are officially or unofficially cooperating with the regime,” she said, pointing to severe restrictions Iran has imposed on the internet as part of a crackdown on nationwide protests earlier this year.

State media has reposted some of the memes, including some from the account behind the “Lego”-style videos, Akhbar Enfejari, which means Explosive News.

Akhbar Enfejari described itself as an independent group of Iranians with no connection to the government. “We don’t even receive any funding. We’re just a group of friends working voluntarily — paying for our own internet, using our own laptops and computers, and doing all of this ourselves,” the group told the Associated Press on the messaging app Telegram.

The group said it is producing and upload from within Iran to try to disrupt decades-long dominance of Western control of the airwaves.

“They’ve long dominated the media landscape and, through that power, imposed narratives on many nations,” Akhbar Enfejari said. “But this time, something feels different. This time, we’ve disrupted the game. This time, we’re doing it better.”

In addition to the memes coming from pro-Iran groups, Iranian government accounts have trolled the U.S., including in a post Wednesday from Iran’s Embassy in South Africa that said, “Say hello to the new world superpower,” with a picture of the Iranian flag. Both the U.S. and Iran declared victory after agreeing to a ceasefire.

Analysts say the deep grasp of U.S. politics and culture is the fruit of more old-school methods of propaganda: a decades-long Iranian government program to promote narratives against the U.S. and Israel.

“This meme war comes from institutions that are very aware what the American public is aware of and pop cultural references that can appeal to them,” Alimardani said.

Messaging from the U.S. and Israel

Analysts say the U.S. and Israel do not appear to be engaging in the same kind of campaign — and given the restrictions Iran has put on internet access in the country, getting such messages to ordinary Iranians would be difficult.

Early in the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video that used AI to make it seem like he was speaking in Farsi, in which he urged Iranians to overthrow their government. The White House has published a steady stream of memes, but those are aimed at a U.S. audience and feature clips from American TV shows and sports.

The U.S. government-run Voice of America, which for decades beamed news reports to many countries that had no tradition of a free press, does still broadcast in Farsi, though it is has been operating with a skeleton staff since Trump ordered it shut down.

“This world order is really changing overnight and the U.S. is not going to end up necessarily as the state that everybody listens to,” Snow said.

McNeil writes for the Associated Press.

‘Iran has the ability to keep hurting the global energy markets.’
Rob Geist-Pinfold, a lecturer in International Security at King’s College London, says that the United States has an interest in ending the war on Iran, while Tehran is likely to prolong the conflict to increase pressure on global markets and force more favourable terms

Oil prices are expected to remain high because of uncertainty over the war on Iran, according to analyst Muyu Xu.
She warns prices could reach as high as $120 if tensions escalate and disrupt key supply routes, with countries holding limited reserves likely to feel the impact the most.