When Katharine McPhee and David Foster decided to throw their weight behind Spencer Pratt’s Los Angeles mayoral campaign, they didn’t do it quietly. On Monday, May 13, the couple hosted a lavish fundraiser in their Brentwood Park backyard—and yes, McPhee literally serenaded the candidate with a custom rendition of Tina Turner’s“The Best.”
The moment, captured and shared by One America News Network host Alicia Summers on Instagram, shows Foster, 76, accompanying McPhee, 42, as she crooned that Pratt, 42, is“better than Karen Bass and Nithya Raman,”his two leading opponents in the race. There’s a delightfully awkward beat when McPhee fumbles Raman’s first name, calling her“Cynthia”instead—and Pratt himself shrugs as if he’s equally unsure of the Los Angeles city council member’s actual name. It’s the kind of unscripted comedy gold that social media was made for.
The guest list read like a Hollywood power play. Brian Grazer, the Imagine Entertainment titan behind Oscar-winning films like A Beautiful Mind and The Da Vinci Code, was in attendance. The fundraiser represents serious celebrity infrastructure backing Pratt’s underdog bid, though recent polling from Emerson College shows current L.A. Mayor Bass maintaining a commanding lead at 30 percent to Pratt’s 22 percent ahead of the June 2 primary.
Pratt’s campaign has weaponized the January 2025 Palisades Fire—which destroyed his own home and damaged thousands of others—as the centerpiece of his challenge to Bass’s leadership. He’s leaned into the narrative of government failure, and when news broke this week that he’d moved his family from a temporary trailer into the luxury Hotel Bel-Air, he fired back on X (formerly Twitter), demanding why the focus was on his accommodations rather than the root cause:“Karen Bass let my home burn down. Also 6,000 of my neighbors.”
The support from McPhee and Foster speaks to Pratt’s ability to galvanize celebrity backing. Former Lakers owner Jeanie Buss donated $1,800 to his campaign in April, while former View cohost Meghan McCain, Jax Taylor, Kristin Cavallari, and Jonathan“FoodGod”Cheban have all endorsed his run. Foster’s connection to Pratt runs deeper than pure celebrity networking—the two have a mutual admiration through Pratt’s friendship with Foster’s former stepson Brody Jenner, and Pratt himself wrote in his recent memoir The Guy You Loved to Hate that he considers Foster the“G.O.A.T,”an acronym for the“Greatest of All Time.”
Whether a serenade and A-list backing can move the needle against Bass’s polling lead remains to be seen. But one thing’s clear: Pratt’s campaign has stopped looking like a novelty and started looking like a well-funded political operation with serious celebrity muscle behind it.
About the Author
Ava Hart
Ava Hart is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.
