American democracy has an engagement issue. Many people either identify as apolitical or are too detached to bat an eye toward local or national politics. And with social media, the rulebook on how to rally voters has changed.
Now, it seems, everyone has jokes. From President Donald Trump’s racist memes to California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s social media trolling, the era of politicians turned part-time meme warriors has emerged in a battle to earn online relatability.
The race for Mikie Sherill’s former seat is a crowded one.
And as New Jersey gears up for a special election to fill an empty seat in Congress next year, one political comedian is looking to turn his talk into action. J-L Cauvin, a lawyer by day and Trump-impersonating stand-up comic by night, is trading in his blond wig and MAGA hat to jump into a very crowded race to fill Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill’s former seat.
For him, having a history of turning political news into digestible comedic bits is a skill needed in today’s climate.
“Thirty years ago, I would have said a comedian running for Congress, that makes no sense. That's silly,” he told Daily Kos. “But we have an electorate that needs to be focused and needs people to grab their attention and to synthesize issues in a more relatable way, and so that's where we're at, and that's what we need to do.”
We caught up with Cauvin to talk about how political comedy translates to the real deal.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Daily Kos: You're a comedian, you do impersonations, you're a lawyer, and now you're running for office. How did this happen?
Cauvin: I've always been interested in politics, but since the pandemic, I think when my political comedy became sort of the thing that stood out from my body of work as a comedian—like some of my satire of Trump and MAGA—really gained me a very large audience. I just started kind of shifting, not just during the day, when I read the paper and watch the news, but even my comedy started to be much more heavily political. And when I knew that my Congresswoman, Mikie Sherrill, was running for governor, I sort of said, “Oh, well, that would make this seat vacant if she were to win.”
[It] sort of just evolved slowly, but then quickly I said, “You know, why can't I?”
I mean, I know, for some people, they may think a comedian running for office is a gimmick, but if you look at my resume outside of comedy, it looks very much like a typical, or starter, resume for someone who would get into politics. So I feel like the comedy and the skills I've acquired make me kind of add something to my candidacy, not detract from it.
DK: You say you have a resume that makes you qualified for taking this position. What makes you more qualified?
Cauvin: I'm a lawyer. I went to Georgetown Law School, and I also graduated from Williams College with a degree in history. And just off the bat, obviously, I think probably, like a majority of Congress, is made up of lawyers. But also, [as] my first job out of law school, I was a prosecutor.
Cauvin is a lawyer who works in eviction prevention.
Now I currently work in eviction prevention. I represent poor people who are on the verge of being evicted. And I think in this day and age where the buzzwords are affordability and safety and things like that, if you look at my resume, you see sort of both things present.
And when it comes to affordability—as much as people care about energy and cost of groceries, of course—at the base level is affordability of some place to live, being able to have a roof over your head. So I think both in a classical sense of, if you just told somebody offhand, “Oh, he's the son of a Haitian immigrant and a blue collar Irish American woman, he's a well-educated lawyer, and he's worked in these different fields.”
On a surface level, somebody would go, “Oh, okay, that sounds like somebody who would get into politics.” But on a more specific level, I think the work I've been doing is where the country's concerns are right now.
DK: I'm sure the people would like to know more of why you're running, what causes you're running on. So is affordability one of the big pieces for you?
Cauvin: It is, and I think I take a slightly different approach, because our district is a little more affluent. So I know [on the] top of [people’s] minds when it comes to affordability are things like property taxes and groceries and energy. That's something I've heard from all ranges of economic stability, is that energy prices are through the roof.
But I do take a slightly different tact, and it's one of the issues where maybe I would be a little more left than a standard middle of the road Democrat, because seeing what's coming in terms of housing, not just where it is now for the poor and the working class, but in terms of the cuts Trump has proposed to HUD. They are going to, I honestly think, create a Great Depression-type epidemic, but for a certain class of people.
Yes, affordability is [a concern] across the board, but I think in terms of housing, [that is] where I'm a little more concerned. But I rent, so obviously I have maybe a little bit of a different concern than a lot of the candidates, who I think are homeowners.
And as a 46 year old, elder care has been something I've been obsessed with. My mom did pretty well for a high school-educated woman, economically. She worked her ass off for 50 years, but when she was unable to care for my dad anymore, we had to get him into a nursing home, which nobody likes to do.
And we're doing the best we can. It was a nice facility, but there's no way to really feel great about aging and even best case circumstances.
But I think [about] how difficult we've made it in terms of elder care and home health aides and all these things that are huge loops.
DK: You hit on a lot of bigger concerns, but you also highlighted how when people hear these issues, it's really easy to detach yourself from it. One thing that I really enjoy about comedy is how it could bridge politics and comedy to point out these really absurd things in a very human way. It seems like you do that as well with your impersonations.
Cauvin: With the impersonations I think it became easy. Easier. I could get a certain segment of people to watch me if I just sort of spoke and pontificated and told you, “Here's what we need to do.”
I'm not pandering, I'm just synthesizing how I see this government working with the skills that I have. But over the years, from people saying to me throughout the Trump presidency, “You're making this shitshow feel better. I can watch your videos and relax a little bit.”
Laughter is not the best medicine. I'm sorry, I hate to break that to people. Medicine is, I believe, the best medicine. And instead of being hospice care for people's emotions at the end of a horrible Trump year, maybe I can get involved and do something preventative, instead of, you know, at the end of democracy.
DK: At the same time, comedy has seeped into political candidates. Trump has done that for years. He's this comedic bully in a sense, and now we have Newsom, who has picked up the same comedic bullying personality where it's funny, but it's mean, but it's still politics. Do you see yourself having this kind of approach to politics?
Cauvin: I've been doing comedy for 22 years. I started when I was in law school. So they've been these, like parallel tracks my entire adult life. And it's more organic at this point for me, I can use it in my skill set without having to be like, “All right, team, let's get together our meme package right now.”
And I'm not saying it doesn't work. It seems to work.
I think when people meet me, I won't have to do comedy. I think it will just be part of the personality and part of the engagement. If push comes to shove, I can shove, and I can roast with the best of them, and I can stand up for myself, for my party and for the people I represent. But I'm not looking to be a meme warrior either.
I think Trump has really coarsened the culture. I think we have become, in the last decade, a worse society.
I met a bunch of great people canvassing for signatures. But I had people say very rude things to me. And I'm six foot seven, 290 pounds. I would joke with friends after and say, “If I wasn't holding a clipboard that says I'm trying to do something good they wouldn't talk to me like that.”
Some people might say that electing another comedian might not help what you're saying is one of the problems ailing us. But I think it would because I'm not, like, let's keep punching down and let's keep attacking and roasting people. I have the skill, I'm prepared with it, but it's not really how I'm running and not how I would want to govern.
DK: You are in a pretty blue district. But we've had a lot of divisiveness in the past years. Should you get elected, is unity something you've been thinking about as well?
Cauvin: I was obviously thinking about running well before the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And even though I found him distasteful and his politics terrible, [his assassination] really made me nervous. I feel terrible that that happened. So that was probably the only time I gave pause, in general, to anything involving politics.
A photo of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk is seen on a large screen during a memorial for Kirk, on Sept. 21, in Glendale, Arizona.
But I think what has to happen first is unity. Because I really do believe the MAGA movement in a well-functioning democracy would be like a 30% aggressively fringe political movement, like when you see Europe, what they do, like France, when their far right party gets like 30% everybody's like panicking and saying, We've got to shut it down. We've got to all unite against this sort of anti democratic far right force here. They hold all the levers of power in the federal government right now.
And I think first and foremost, and what I'm sort of arguing in my district is the candidates right now. They're sort of considered the leaders. One is a former congressman who's moving districts to try and get elected again. One is a sort of local machine politician who they're trying to kind of anoint. And the third is a Bernie Sanders acolyte, who I think probably is a bona fide, genuine progressive, but also that movement tends to have a, “Let's aim our fire at Democrats first and then MAGA second.”
What I'm arguing is that I think there needs to be unity among Democrats and obviously independents, and make the party a little more enticing, a little more normal, a little more focused on everyday issues.
There's two civil wars going on, there's Democrats versus Democrats, and then Democrats versus anti-Constitution, Trump MAGA. We've got to unite this part and come to a consensus. [Otherwise], we're going to keep ceding the ground to what effectively, I think, is a minority party in the country, but has much more cohesion and intensity.
But if we just fight, fight, fight, and each side wants everything, and we let this cohesive problem known as MAGA continue to just stay together in lockstep for horrible policies and horrible things and corruption, you know, we're done.
