New York City and Chicago voters made the most injudicious decisions possible electing Zohran Mamdani and Brandon Johnson to be their mayors. Both democratic socialists are inept yet destructive, unserious yet dangerous, demagogues who spew venom and traffic in incendiary divisive rhetoric. Their deranged policies will bankrupt their cities, financially, morally and culturally. Will Los Angeles voters do the same?

Actually, they already have. The question is, will they repeat their mistake and reelect Karen Bass? The current mayor is a Fidelista and a member of the Venceremos Brigade, a Cuban “enterprise that had a goal of encouraging the health and survival of a despotic, evil regime.” She reportedly was the group’s Southern California leader.

Or will voters carry City Council member Nithya Raman, whose “socialism could drag LA” to a “Marxist 19th century” dystopia, into the mayor’s office?

Reality television star and angry Palisades fire victim Spencer Pratt is making a splash as an outsider whose fed-up-with-it rhetoric resonates among many. He’s polling at 22% to Bass’ 30% and Raman’s 19% for the June 2 primary. The fact that Bass and Raman are polling anywhere north of low single digits is not encouraging.

The media, always invested in the most far-left candidates, have done everything they can to make Pratt look like a lightweight fool, but his loud honesty about the real-life trials of living in Los Angeles — the squalid homelessness, a perpetual public safety crisis, incompetent and unaccountable governance, to name a few of the many difficulties — rings truer every time he speaks. Pratt is the rip-sawing candidate the city needs to wake it from a progressive slumber that’s leading to decline.

Even if he doesn’t win, he’s giving California Democrats exactly the rude treatment they deserve. His artificial intelligence-produced videos are appropriately brutal, portraying Bass as a clown, a comic book villain and an incompetent who lists last year’s fires — which took Pratt’s Pacific Palisades home — as one of her accomplishments she’s running on.

Gov. Gavin Newsom also takes his well-earned lashes as an out-of-touch French royal eating cake, as does former vice president and failed (thanks be to God) presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who is presented as a useless lush. The entire California Democratic machine is made of political parasites who should be ridiculed out of public life. Pratt’s takedowns are a good start.

The mayor’s race is as much, if not more, about Angelenos than it is about the candidates. Everyone grumbles and complains in Los Angeles, including the Democratic voters, who, inexplicably, dutifully pull the lever for far-left Democrats, expecting things to change. This election offers them a timely chance to change direction. If they don’t take it, then all the blame lands on them, not the self-dealing hustlers and dedicated leftists they elect.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board