MEDIA MONDAY / DAVID HORSEY POLITICAL CARTOONIST PAR EXCELLENT

 

David Horsey is one of America’s most respected editorial cartoonists, known for combining sharp political satire with richly detailed illustration and an often cinematic sense of humor. 

His work has been syndicated widely, appearing in major newspapers including The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune. A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, Horsey earned his first Pulitzer in 1999 for cartoons centered on the Clinton-Lewinsky era and won again in 2003 for work critiquing the George W. Bush administration and the Iraq War climate. 

Columbia University Provost Jonathan Cole (left) presents
David Horsey with the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial
Cartooning.

Born in Evansville, Indiana, in 1951, Horsey moved to Seattle as a child and developed an early fascination with politics and drawing. While attending the University of Washington, he became the first editorial cartoonist ever selected as editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The Daily, a sign of the influence his visual commentary already carried. 

 Horsey began his professional journalism career as a reporter before joining the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1979 as editorial cartoonist. Over the next three decades, he became nationally recognized for cartoons that skewered politicians of every stripe while also examining American culture, media excess, war, and public hypocrisy. His style blends caricature, painterly draftsmanship, and concise writing, often delivering a joke and a political argument simultaneously. 

Beyond cartooning, Horsey has also written opinion columns and published numerous collections of his work. Following the closure of the print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Horsey worked for the Los Angeles Times before returning to Seattle, where his cartoons later appeared in The Seattle Times. In recent years he has expanded into fiction writing, publishing his debut novel Beach of Stars in 2025.  Click Here: 

Despite changes in media and politics, Horsey remains part of the distinguished tradition of American editorial cartoonists whose drawings can summarize an era in a single unforgettable image. 

Pulitzer Prize double winner, David Horsey.

A RANDOM SELECTION OF HIS POLITICAL CARTOONS: