SANTA MONICA, CA — Beach volleyball legend and Los Angeles native Christopher ‘Sinjin’ Smith is touting Spencer Pratt’s “disrupter” mayoral campaign and explained why he believes Pratt has tapped into voter frustration over the glaring issues facing the city.
“It doesn’t surprise me at all that Spencer is resonating with the people of Santa Monica and LA in general, because he’s saying common-sense things,” Smith, the first volleyball player to win 100 career tournaments during a storied Hall of Fame career that earned him the nickname “King of the Beach,” told Fox News Digital.
“We’ve all seen the news and everything else of what’s been going on for the past years and how things aren’t as good as they could be, and Spencer steps in and goes. This doesn’t make any sense, particularly with the fires, and things could be a lot better. And I believe that he’s really going to try to make things better for everybody. This isn’t a political thing, I don’t think at all, I think it’s more, how do you make the lives of all people from Los Angeles better? And he’s hitting all the key points, and it seems like he could be the guy.”
Smith, who was born in Santa Monica and has lived in Los Angeles for the entirety of his life, including in the Pacific Palisades, told Fox News Digital that Pratt feels like the man for the moment.
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“What’s been going on in the city of LA has been going on for a long, long time, as long as I’ve been around,” Smith explained. “I think a lot of people in LA have been waiting for someone like him, somebody with common sense who speaks logically and is willing to do the tough things to make our town better.”
The devastating Palisades wildfire came within a few miles of Smith’s Santa Monica home and several of his friends lost everything they owned in the tragedy that many believe Mayor Karen Bass, who is running for re-election, didn’t do enough to prevent, respond to, or rebuild from.
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Smith said he has met Bass and that she is a “very nice lady,” but for “whatever reason,” it “doesn’t seem like she wants to do the hard work to make things better for people.”
“Particularly when you have the fire and so many different things that went wrong before the fire, during the fire, after the fire,” Smith said. “It seems like anything and everything that could go wrong went wrong, and leadership is the key for all of that. Again, very nice lady, but if she’s not willing or not capable of doing the things that are gonna help the people of LA, then what’s the point? I think you have to try something different and, again, politics out of it.”
While the city of Santa Monica is one of several independent municipalities that do not vote in the LA mayor race, the winner’s policies will impact all residents of Los Angeles County, and Smith believes that Pratt’s outsider status is necessary to shake up the institutional problems like homelessness, fraud and crime.
“Spencer Pratt is the kind of person that he’s been on the outside for so long, he’s seen all this bad stuff that’s going on, and he’s going, why is it like this? And it doesn’t have to be,” Smith said. “So yeah, I really get a sense that he wants to come in, he wants it to change things, he wants to disrupt everything that’s been going on in the past and change it for the better. It just makes logical sense. All the things that he’s been saying, and I certainly hope that if he does get into office, he’s able to accomplish the things that he wants to accomplish, because it’ll be good for everybody.”
Pratt will face off in the mayoral primary on Tuesday night against Bass and progressive city council member Nithya Raman in an election where the top two candidates will move on to the November general election. However, if a candidate receives 50% of the vote, they become the next mayor outright.