Joe
Cunningham

Joe Cunningham was elected to represent South Carolina's 1st Congressional District in 2018, becoming the first Democrat to win that seat in nearly forty years. He ran as an ocean engineer turned attorney, focused on offshore drilling, infrastructure, and a politics that fit the place he was actually from rather than the one cable television wished he was from.

He arrived in Washington as a member of the freshman class that flipped the House, and quickly became known for breaking with party leadership when his district required it — and for treating the work as a job rather than an audition. He served on the Veterans' Affairs and Natural Resources committees, and helped pass a permanent ban on offshore drilling along the Atlantic coast.

After leaving Congress, Joe ran for Governor of South Carolina in 2022, the only Democrat on the ballot statewide. He spent the campaign listening to small towns the national party had stopped visiting, and came away with a thesis he has been arguing publicly ever since: that Democrats had become a party of cultural assertions rather than economic ones, and were paying for it in the places that used to send them to Washington.

He was among the earliest elected voices to publicly call on President Biden not to seek reelection, a position that drew sharp criticism at the time and has aged into something closer to consensus. Life of the Party is his account of the years that led to that moment — and the much larger argument it points to.

Joe is an attorney, a former ocean engineer, and a father. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina.