Bronx Lawmaker Emerges as Savior of the Cupcake

Weeks have passed since Michael Benjamin's fling as a cable news sensation, but the Democratic assemblyman from the Bronx insists he hasn't figured out why people cared so much about his battle to save the cupcake.

When he first heard that several Long Island school districts were forbidding parents from bringing the frosted treats to their children's birthday parties, Mr. Benjamin never anticipated that his decision to take action would forever brand him as the nation's leading cupcake advocate.

"I was ticked that people had the temerity of banning food products," he said in a recent interview. In his opinion, the Long Island superintendents were "robbing children of pleasant childhood memories."

His solution was, of course, a legislative one. He cranked out a bill to make cupcakes the official state children's snack and thereby thwart the bans. In days, he was passionately standing up for the little cupcake before a national audience, appearing on Fox News, NBC Nightly News, and the "The Daily Show."

To those following his career, the unusual nature of Mr. Benjamin's latest cause is but part and parcel of a track record that is emerging as one of the most unpredictable in Albany.

It's said the Legislature is populated with three discernable groups of political personas: the clock-punchers, the leaders-in-waiting, and the firebrands.

Mr. Benjamin, 49, is neither somebody biding his time, nor a self-proclaimed contender for the throne, nor a consistent advocate for a discrete ideological agenda.

Among his colleagues, Mr. Benjamin, a tall and soft-spoken man who wears a close-cropped beard, rimless glasses, and an austere expression, stands out as an unpeggable enigma.

Part of a shrinking caucus of black elected officials in the Bronx, Mr. Benjamin angered the largely Hispanic Democratic establishment in the county by endorsing Senator Obama for president rather than Senator Clinton. He resisted a direct appeal by the former first lady, who called him personally. "I don't think the country should be run for 30 years by two families. That borders on being un-American," he said.

He has been one of the few Democrats in the Assembly publicly to scold Governor Spitzer. He said Mr. Spitzer "needs to learn that politics requires collegiality." And he defied the wishes of Bronx Democrats and mystified his colleagues by embarking on a quixotic and failed run for city public advocate in 2005.

A reflection of his district's shifting demographics, which include growing numbers of West African, Caribbean, and Honduran immigrants, his politics run the gamut of Ralph Nader liberalism to Pat Robertson conservatism.

He's a proponent of expanding social services and tenants' rights. At the same time, Mr. Benjamin vehemently objected to a bill legalizing gay marriage. He's one of the most vocal champions of charter schools and has introduced legislation condemning the persecution of Falun Gong members in China.

He is also perhaps the only lawmaker who works literally next to his wife. His wife, Kennedy Williams, a spiritual author and former R&B talent agent, is his unpaid chief-of-staff. She sits in an adjacent room at their newly renovated district headquarters on Boston Road.

"With a regular chief-of-staff, I can leave him or her in the office and be done with it," Mr. Benjamin says with the driest of sarcasm. "I have to go home with her. There isn't an end to it."

It wasn't so long ago that Mr. Benjamin was a relatively anonymous Bronx Democratic Party activist, whose resume reflected a man perched comfortably on the middle step of the political ladder.

A son of a schoolteacher and a carpenter, Mr. Benjamin grew up in a neighborhood that famously symbolized the persistence of urban blight. His offices are a block away from where President Reagan stood at a campaign stop in 1980 and accused President Carter of abandoning his promise to rebuild the South Bronx after devastating arson fires. Decades later, Mr. Benjamin's Assembly district is the second poorest out of 150 in the state.

After stints as a district director for U.S. Rep. José Serrano, a legislative director for then-City Council member, Adolfo Carrión, and as community coordinator for assemblywoman Aurelia Greene, and as deputy chief clerk of the Bronx Board of Elections, Mr. Benjamin found an opening.

His district assemblywoman, Gloria Davis, resigned her seat in disgrace, pleading guilty to accepting bribes. Mr. Benjamin, endorsed by the Bronx Democratic Party, won a special election, trouncing a former aide to Davis.

It could be said that Mr. Benjamin's independent streak first surfaced months after taking office, which is exactly when he met his Ms. Williams, a South Carolina native.

He first saw her when he stopped by the William Hodson Senior Center on Webster Avenue, where Ms. Williams was directing and producing a play she had written about a troubled group of freed slaves who form a community. She had just finished a book called "Processing Life's Moments: Therapy for the Soul," which she said she had written in a burst of creative energy after a spiritual awakening in Sedona, Ariz.

Mr. Benjamin visited the center and was so impressed with her work that he offered to try to secure a grant from the Assembly to pay for a stage and more theater projects for the seniors.
He never got the money, but by his third visit to the center, he won a date with Ms. Benjamin, who accepted a lunch invitation at a nearby Albanian-run Italian restaurant. By November, Mr. Benjamin was married for the first time in his life.

"When I married Kennedy, she started talking to me and pointing out things," Mr. Benjamin said. "I wouldn't see things deeply. I had a loyalty to the party and wasn't seeing the bigger picture."

Said Ms. Williams: "I'm not a politician and don't care much for politics. Basically, you just look at what this person is doing that's going to hurt them. For Michael, it was pretty easy for me to see what was going on. All you had to do was be around him and his party."

Ms. Williams, who bears a resemblance to The Cosby Show's Phylicia Rashad, wore a zebra-patterned beret that she said was to conceal a "bad hair day," and bright cherry-red lipstick, a color she said she was trying out before a book-signing at a Christian culture center.

She is the first to acknowledge that her role in her husband's political operation has raised eyebrows. She recalls the frosty response she received when she accompanied her husband to a meeting with Bronx Democrats, who were stunned to learn he was running for public advocate.

Ms. Williams said they told him: "If you're going to run for something, we're the ones who got you there; you tell us first." She couldn't resist chiming in: "I raised my hand and said, 'Excuse me, may I speak. I thought you all elected him because you believed in what he did.'"

Her argument won her and her husband little goodwill. A year later, Mr. Benjamin survived a primary challenge by his district leader, whose candidacy received what he suspects was the tacit endorsement of the Bronx Democratic chairman, Jose Rivera.

After Mr. Benjamin announced his support for Mr. Obama, he got a call from a woman whose husband was a member of the Secret Service during the Clinton administration.

"She said I'm biting the hand that feeds me," Mr. Benjamin said. "She said Kennedy is going to be the ruin of me."

In Mr. Benjamin's view, the independent path his wife encouraged him to take has been his source of strength.

He likes to tell the story of the time when members of the DC 37, the municipal public employee union, stopped by his Albany office to urge him to oppose a measure that would expand the number of charter schools in New York. The union represents thousands of school cafeteria employees.

"Before I would begin my response, I would always ask: 'Who here has a child or a grandchild in a charter school?' And invariably, two or three had to raise their hand," he said.

"And I would ask them, 'So why shouldn't other families have the opportunity to have success?' They wound up making my case to their colleagues for me. They had to admit the truth."

Mr. Benjamin ended up receiving the union's endorsement.