Former Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin lands job with White House. Here’s his new role

Former three-term Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin has landed a new role with President Joe Biden’s administration.

Benjamin is set to serve as a senior adviser to the president and the director of the White House’s Office of Public Engagement, according to a Monday statement from the president. Benjamin, an attorney, will start in the role on April 1, he told The State on Monday morning.

The director of the White House’s Office of Public Engagement “works at the local, state, and national levels to ensure community leaders, diverse perspectives, and new voices have the opportunity to inform the work of the president in an inclusive, transparent and responsible way,” a Monday news release said.

Benjamin was Columbia’s first African American mayor, a role he held from 2010 to 2021. During that time, he also served a stint as the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, a national group that advises cities and towns nationwide.

“Mayor Benjamin is a longtime public servant, who has served the people of South Carolina for over two decades statewide and as a three-term mayor of Columbia,” Biden said in a statement. “As a former President of both the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the African American Mayors Association, Steve’s deep relationships with communities across the country will serve our Administration and the American public well.”

Benjamin, who did not seek reelection to Columbia’s top political office in 2021 and has since been practicing law, said he has been in discussions with the White House for several weeks about the Office of Public Engagement role and noted that he had a meeting with Biden on the matter recently.

“It’s the front door to the White House,” Benjamin said of the Office of Public Engagement during a Monday interview with The State. “It’s the place where all third-party groups and organizations from the chamber to labor to civil rights groups and everyone in-between engage and advise the president, and provide thoughtful constructive criticism to the ears and eyes of the White House. So, as the president looks to execute on administering historic legislative successes, as well as he prepares, potentially, for (2024), I’m going to serve as an adviser for him in moving the agenda forward.”

Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms previously led the Office of Public Engagement for Biden.

Benjamin, now 53, had a high-profile run as Columbia’s mayor. He backed streetscaping and facade improvements that served as a catalyst in revitalizing Columbia’s long-dormant Main Street north of the State House. Under his watch, that corridor transformed from an almost forgotten thoroughfare to a buzzing city nerve center that is now lined with restaurants, bars, a movie theater, apartments, hotels and more.

There also was a private student housing boom in Columbia during Benjamin’s time as mayor, fueled in part by his push for tax incentives for developers looking to build such projects. It was a move that has fundamentally altered the capital city’s skyline.

And he was the driving political force behind the ongoing redevelopment of the BullStreet District, a massive overhaul of the 181-acre former State Mental Hospital site. The city has pledged more than $100 million in public money for the project that is being shepherded by Greenville’s Hughes Development.

Benjamin, a University of South Carolina alum, noted there have been a number of former mayors who have worked in Biden’s administration, from the aforementioned Bottoms to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and beyond.

“Mayors, I think, tend to have a very different skill set,” Benjamin said. “Very responsive and accountable because we are close to the people. I think having an ability to listen to diverse and oftentimes divergent views makes you well equipped for this type of a role.”

Benjamin, who, aside from having his law firm, also purchased a historic mansion on Blanding Street and turned it into an event space last year, said he plans to split his time between Columbia and Washington, D.C. His wife, Judge DeAndrea Gist Benjamin, recently was approved for a federal appeals judge position in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The couple has two daughters.

It is perhaps unsurprising that Benjamin would segue into a national role following his time as Columbia’s mayor. Throughout his time leading the capital city there were flirtations with the national scene.

There was the aforementioned run as the leader of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 2018 and 2019. He also was in leadership for the national African American Mayors Association in 2015 and 2016, and he served as the executive chairman for Municipal Bonds for America. He also previously served a stint as the co-chair of the Center of U.S. Global Leadership Board, which is the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition’s education arm.

He addressed the Democratic National Convention in 2016 and also was seen sitting with former President Bill Clinton during the opening night of the convention that year.

It was also divulged — via a hacked email from Hillary Clinton presidential campaign manager John Podesta that was released by WikiLeaks in 2016 — that Benjamin had been on a “first cut” list of vice presidential possibilities for Clinton that year.

In 2020, Benjamin was one of several mayors who met with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris shortly after they had been elected to talk about various agenda items for the new administration.

The former Columbia mayor is ready to get started in his new White House role.

“I’m very excited,” Benjamin said. “This job is at the intersection of preserving and protecting the sacred trust the president has with the people he serves. It is something that I am taking very seriously. I’m humbled by the opportunity and the trust placed in me. We are going to work our tails off on behalf of the American people.”

Benjamin pointed to a number of benchmarks of Biden’s first term, including the American Rescue Plan relief funding amid the worst of the pandemic, investments in climate resiliency, and a bill to invest $200 billion in semiconductor chip manufacturing in the U.S. in the coming years.

“We have to make sure we are doing our job at sharing that messaging to people in a way that resonates at the kitchen table,” Benjamin said. “And that includes not just talking, but a whole lot of listening. That’s going to be my job in this role, along with sharing the concerns, the hopes and the dreams of the American people with the president.”