In January, the Los Angeles–born reality television star Spencer Pratt published a memoir titled The Guy You Loved to Hate: Confessions from a Reality TV Villain. Reviewing the book for CalMatters, Jim Newton wrote that Pratt, who rose to fame as a villainous character on MTV’s “The Hills,” presents himself as “selfish, undisciplined and unprincipled”: a man who stole a friend’s photographs and sold them to Us Weekly and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on designer suits and ammunition to soothe himself when his reality television career stalled.

Little in Pratt’s biography suggests he had his sights set on a political career. But by the time he was promoting his book, that had changed. In January of last year, the most destructive fire in the history of Los Angeles tore through Pratt’s neighborhood in the Pacific Palisades. Pratt and his wife, fellow reality television star Heidi Montag, lost their home, as did thousands of others including Pratt’s parents. Pratt’s reaction to the devastation was fury: he blamed the local elected officials for failing to stop it and launched a new chapter of his meandering career as a righteous activist.

“For the last eight months, my life’s goal, aside from obviously being a father and a husband, is getting accountability for the gross, criminal negligence that burned down my house,” Pratt told the Hollywood Reporter last fall.