The lunar calendar may say it’s the year of the Horse, but in Los Angeles politics it’s becoming the Year of the Dog.
Spencer Pratt made animal welfare a key platform in his failed mayoral campaign, releasing an ad in the city showing himself surrounded by dogs and condemning animal abuse social media posts. But Pratt wasn’t the only one looking to win the votes of animal rights activists.
City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who is in the Nov. 3 race against Mayor Karen Bass, is promising to fix LA’s animal shelter system, which she says is in dire straits, blaming a “broken spay/neuter system” among other factors. Dylan Kendall, a longtime cat rescuer and advocate, made his background in animal welfare a cornerstone of his unsuccessful bid against Council Member Hugo Soto-MartÃnez.
Provincial Deputy. He said. John McKinney published the book 10 step plan to support animal welfare as part of his campaign for city attorney.
“Politicians understand that this is an important group of people who can move the needle in races, especially close races,” McKinney said. He finished second in the primary and will face Marissa Roy, a democratic socialist who serves as the state’s deputy attorney general.
No candidate, however, focused more on animal rights than Pratt during the recent primary campaign.
“I don’t want anyone to endorse me except the moms and animal lovers in L.A. That’s my whole vote,” Pratt said the weekend before the Fox News comedy show “Gutfeld!”
In a about 10-a minute long videoPratt echoes social media posts that dogs on Skid Row are used for drug testing, bred for drug money and abandoned in poor conditions by their homeless owners, among other concerns about overcrowded, dirty shelters across the city.
Descriptions on social media about Skid Row dogs being used to fight and detect drugs often lack concrete evidence and information that can be taken, said Lt. Andrew Mathes of the Los Angeles Police Department, the officer in charge of the Central Gang Impact Team working in the Skid Row area.
Paul Koretz, who fought for animal rights during his years on the City Council, said Pratt’s claims are a “stunning gloss” on Skid Row’s real problems, aimed at winning votes. He and others say that the biggest problem is illegal breeding, which causes neglected livestock to end up living in homes or dying on the streets.
Still, some animal rights activists credit social media posts depicting animal abuse as drawing public attention to the issue.
“When they finally spread online, that’s when the community wants to get involved. That’s where the candidates will come in,” said Liv Sigel, founder of the Underdog Community Project.
Some activists have directed much of their anger at Mayor Karen Bass over the city’s animal abuse problems, saying the lack of funding for the Animal Services department, including the spay and neuter fund, will lead to sick and abandoned animals entering the system.
The nonprofit organization Stand Up For Pits sued the city and Bass last year, arguing in an amended complaint dated May 2026 that officials failed to enforce animal cruelty laws on city streets and allowed pets to live in deplorable conditions.
Bass campaign spokesman Alex Stack noted that he helped launch pop-ups at a Skid Row spay-and-neuter clinic and started an initiative to train 100 LAPD officers to identify and handle animal cruelty cases. Mathes of the LAPD said that this program, which was started in November last year, has saved 45 dogs and led to the opening of six cases of animal cruelty and neglect.
“Social media makes it so easy to spread anger and provide real solutions to real problems,” Stack said in a statement. “Animal neglect and abuse on Skid Row is a real, long-standing issue, but we have to make sure we’re providing real solutions to the most pressing problems,”
Bass has promised that LA’s shelters will become a “national model of animal welfare” after taking office in 2022. He hired a new general manager, Staycee Dains, but Dains only stayed on the job for a year. He told The Times that insurmountable red tape prevented him from making changes.
Recently, Bass hired a new Animal Services general manager, Gabrielle Amster, and helped organize a $14-million grant to city shelters in partnership with Best Friends Animal Society and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Raman, answering a question about the campaign, said that he will increase the funding of Animal Services if he is elected as mayor, and install new leadership that is compatible with local activists and expand the spay-and-neuter programs to save money in the long run, reducing the amount of money paid from the department.
“This is an issue that I think is important to many people,” Raman said at a campaign event.
Joey Tuccio, a Skid Row dog rescuer, said he supports Pratt because he was the first candidate for mayor to take up the issue. He criticized both Bass and Raman for what he called their indifference to the conditions of animals on city streets.
“We’ve called the police many times about dogs being hit, dogs being neglected, dogs dying on the street,” Tuccio said. “And nine times out of ten it doesn’t come.”
Tuccio said he invited both candidates to go with him to Skid Row to see for themselves the problems he sees. So far he said he is still waiting for an answer.
