“Hi, I’m Harvey Epstein, and I’m running for city council of New York City. This is a real thing,” a bald-capped John Mulaney opened a fake political ad on SNL this past weekend. It is, in fact, a very real thing, as many viewers who may not have been familiar with New York’s down-ballot races learned in the aftermath of the standout sketch. Just ask Harvey Epstein himself, the real New York State assemblyman and city council candidate that Mulaney was parodying. (That’s his real poster design too, by the way.) Apparently, Epstein (the real, presumably non-evil one) had no idea the sketch was happening and went to bed early. When he woke up on Sunday, he had “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds” of text messages telling him to watch it, he told The New York Times. “So I watched it and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s me. It was, like, ridiculously funny. I couldn’t stop laughing.”
It’s a good thing Epstein has such a good sense of humor about the whole thing, because being saddled with the names of “two of the most notorious sex perverts of all time,” in the words of the sketch, is a really unfortunate situation. It’s an albatross that has followed the real Epstein in his own campaigns as well, although the part about the assemblyman “look[ing] out for miners” (“m-i-n-e-r-s. That is an important distinction!”) was fabricated—probably for the best. (Mulaney’s earring, on the other hand, is completely accurate.)
It’s especially unlucky for the real Epstein, given that codifying Roe v Wade and supporting LGBTQIA and non-binary New Yorkers are both important parts of his platform—something he shared with the hundreds of people who had followed him on Twitter (X) overnight. “All joking aside, I hope my newfound followers will consider donating to @RAINN [the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network], who do extremely valuable work supporting survivors,” he wrote, with a link to the nonprofit’s website. “It’s really critical that I take the joy out of the joke and also be serious about issues of domestic violence,” he later added in an interview with City & State New York.
The real Epstein (again, not that one) is also using the sketch as a platform to share some of his other policies, like his fight for tenants’ rights and the fact that he also doesn’t think Manhattan should be called “Epstein’s Island” if he wins. “I’m 57 years old. I’ve been Harvey Epstein my whole life,” he told NYT. “I have a really lovely reputation in the neighborhood, and people know me for who I am.”
In the words of Mulaney’s version of the politician, “Think of it this way. If my names are this bad and I’m still running for public office, think of how much better I’d have to be than everybody else, right? That’s just math!”