Four years ago, Jonathan Hetterly, a forty-three-year-old Asian-American mental-health counsellor, attended a Donald Trump rally as a joke. He printed “Asians for Trump” shirts and signs that read “Give us a call, we know how to build walls.” The event was not as funny as he’d hoped. He was struck by the tone of menace, despite the presence of children. The overwhelmingly white crowd shouted chants of “Bill’s a rapist” and “Lock her up.” A campaign volunteer told him, “Three hundred thousand undocumented immigrants are infiltrating our borders, and we need Trump to protect us.” Later, Hetterly wrote, “I’m ready to focus on what unites us as a nation,” adding, “laughter makes the world better.” He told me recently, “I really had no idea he was going to win.”
I met Hetterly on Wednesday night outside of the Township Auditorium, in Columbia, South Carolina, where Dave Chappelle was about to perform in support of the Democratic Presidential candidate Andrew Yang. Hetterly supports Yang unironically. “I’m kind of wearing a little bit of my political ideology on my sleeve this time,” he said, pointing to his T-shirt, which, in a play on the title of a White Stripes song, read “ICKY TRUMP.” (Hetterly purchased it at Third Man Records, Jack White’s store in Nashville.) Chappelle’s journey to supporting Yang had some echoes of his own, Hetterly suggested. In 2016, after Trump’s victory, Chappelle went on “Saturday Night Live” and, as Hetterly put it, “just sort of mocked the white outrage about Trump being elected.” “I haven’t seen white people this mad since the O.J. verdict,” Chappelle said, adding, “I’m wishing Donald Trump luck, and I’m going to give him a chance.” Hetterly suspected that Chappelle regretted not being more politically active before the election and that his recent campaigning for Yang was a result. Chappelle endorsed Yang in mid-January and, before a recent performance, in Iowa, called Yang “inspiring.”
On Wednesday evening, Chappelle phoned voters in South Carolina on Yang’s behalf. “My name is Dave Chappelle. I’m a world-famous comedian,” he told one answerer, after a few minutes of scripted phone-banking in Columbia. “But, today, I’m just rolling some phone calls and trying to garner support. We got a big primary coming up.” He ended the call, “All right. Wu-Tang.” Chappelle reportedly plans to go door to door for Yang, as well.
That night, more than two thousand people gathered at the auditorium in Columbia to see him perform. Outside, members of the #YangGang wore shirts and hats that read “Math”—an acronym for “Make America Think Harder”—and held signs that read “Humanity First.” Volunteers with various nonprofits registered people to vote. Walking around the grounds, I met supporters not only of Yang but of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump. It was a remarkably diverse crowd in just about every way. “It’s America,” Hetterly said.
A middle-aged white woman named Jane, who lives in Columbia, was trying to sell a few extra tickets that she’d mistakenly purchased. On her car was a bumper sticker that read “THE DEMOCRAT 2020.” Jane clarified, as she waved her tickets in the air, “Bernie’s not a Democrat.” She volunteered for Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016, she said; this time around, she’s “more of a Bloomberg person.” Steyer, Bloomberg’s fellow-billionaire, who has invested heavily in South Carolina, was also on her mind. “I don’t get a lot of mail these days,” she said, smiling, “but I can always count on mail from Tom Steyer.”
Two friends in their early thirties who’d driven down from Charlotte, Xavier Jimenez, an I.T. worker, and Michael Zytkow, who works at a gaming nonprofit, told me that they had stepped over a Steyer yard sign on the way from the car to the auditorium. “I met Steyer like two weeks ago,” Zytkow said. “My friend works for his campaign.” Zytkow ranked Steyer highly among the candidates, but Yang was his top choice. Jimenez said, “I mostly came for Chappelle.”
A man who works in the boating industry said, “I didn’t even know it was politics until my buddy just told me.” He had come to the show with his wife, a fashion blogger. They were both in their forties, both white, and both supported Trump. They had seen Chappelle the last time he was in town, too, and they weren’t upset to learn that the event was a fund-raiser for Yang. “I’m all about somebody raising money for something they believe in,” the man said. “Some of our best friends in the world are hard-core liberals.” He didn’t mind ridicule directed at Trump, he said. “It’s hilarious. Who can’t pick on the guy?” His wife said, “He’s a buffoon, at times.” Could Chappelle persuade them to support Yang instead? “We’re always open-minded,” the man said, “but probably not.”
Dave Rogers, a retired, seventy-one-year-old African-American, took in the crowd as he waited for his wife to arrive. As far as the Democratic candidates go, he said, “I’m still debating on who I’m gonna deal with. I’m not even sure I’m gonna vote. They’ve stole two elections from us in less than twenty years.” He added, “The last time I tried to vote, the woman accused me of trying to vote twice. Hell, I don’t need to vote twice! The vote don’t count, anyway,” he continued, “when it comes to Presidential elections.” He was referring to the Electoral College. Whom did Rogers like? “What’s the girl’s name? Pocahontas?” He meant Warren. “I like what she’s saying. I don’t know too much about Tom, but I like what he’s saying, too.” The Steyer campaign had come by his home earlier that day. Rogers had let his wife handle it. “Was it Aristotle or Plato? One of them was talking about politics. He said, ‘Stay away from the beans.’ I said, ‘I’ll remember that.’ ” Rogers hoped that Chappelle would own up to his 2016 “S.N.L.” monologue. “I’m saying, man, you need to stay away from the beans. You don’t know how many people you influence by some of the stuff you say.”
Humor has played a distinctive role in Yang’s unlikely campaign from the start. His first breakout moment was probably his appearance, a year ago, on an enormously popular podcast hosted by Joe Rogan, a standup comedian who commands the adoration of legions of fans—most of them men, most of them white, and many of whom chafe at political correctness. On the stump, Yang often jokes about Asian-American stereotypes, saying that “the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math.” When the comedian Shane Gillis was fired from “S.N.L.,” in September, after a clip surfaced in which he made derogatory remarks about Asians, Yang got a lot of attention for defending him. “Shane,” he tweeted, “I prefer comedy that makes people think and doesn’t take cheap shots. But I’m happy to sit down and talk with you if you’d like.” (Gillis has said that he did speak with Yang, and that since then he has texted him on occasion, to tell Yang, for example, that he “crushed it” in a debate.)
