Benjamin's campaign leaves little to chance

Sam Johnson hit the accelerator as he made the turn onto Read Street, the short burst of speed covering about 200 feet of asphalt, before coming to a quick stop in front of the barbershop.

About a half-dozen men on the sidewalk took a quick step back as Steve Benjamin, candidate for Columbia mayor, slowly got out of the passenger seat in what was once one of the city's worst drug areas.

After his five-minute visit, Benjamin got back into the car and turned to jokingly admonish his young driver.

"You can't just roll up and stop like that ... and we pop out like Starsky and Hutch," Benjamin said. "Read Street is a lot better, but it's still Read Street."

Despite his hurried entrance, Benjamin's barbershop visit was not spontaneous. In his effort to become the capital city's first black mayor, Benjamin has spent close to $280,000, and all of that money means Benjamin did not walk into that barbershop without a plan. In this case, it was tucked under his arm.

Benjamin hands the owner of every barbershop and beauty shop he visits a folder with campaign materials and a letter that begins: "Dear Professional Beauticians, Barbers and Small Business Owners" and encourages them to "spread the word" about Benjamin to their clients. The folders include a Benjamin for Mayor "church fan" for the women who are having their hair dried.

Benjamin has raised more than $314,000 for his mayoral campaign from more than 1,100 donors - 38 percent of them from outside the city limits.

Benjamin gets his advice primarily from New Partners and Richard Quinn and Associates, political consulting firms that Benjamin has paid more than $120,000 since his campaign officially began in July.

Their advice, Benjamin said, was to "touch every voter," and Benjamin tried to do that on Saturday, nine days before Tuesday's election.

"It's important that they see us," he said. "People want to see you. They want to touch you, to know you are not afraid to get your hands dirty."

The first stop for Benjamin was a community cleanup in Northwood Hills, a small neighborhood in City Council's District 1, in the triangle formed by I-20, North Main Street and Monticello Road. He found Christie Savage, the neighborhood association president, and a few other people raking pine needles on a traffic island at Amberly, Lauderdale and Romford roads.

Benjamin jumped out of the Honda in his white dress shirt, jeans and python-skin boots, walked straight to Savage and took the rake from her.

"Why didn't I get an invitation to the cleanup?" he asked while giving Savage a hug.

"I had to be fair," she said.

Benjamin's staff fanned out and began raking and sorting through pine needles, stopping occasionally to check their iPhones and Blackberries. Nobody took a rake from Pearl Allen, a neighborhood resident who had a campaign sign in her yard for opponent Steve Morrison.

"We know why they're here - just for visibility," Allen said.

After the cleanup, Benjamin headed over to Meadowlake Park for opening day of a Dixie Youth Baseball league. The park is not in the city limits, but a lot of the families there to watch teams like the Mainstream Computer Tigers are city voters.

Benjamin was invited to speak because of his connection with the league's commissioner, George Adams, a Columbia firefighter. Much of Benjamin's campaign has been based on public safety funding, which has won him the support of a lot of firefighters and police officers.

Before throwing out the ceremonial first pitch (a ball, inside, the umpire decided), Benjamin had to give a speech on a sound system that cut off each time someone stepped on the electrical cord. He had sketched out a few talking points beforehand on the back of an "upcoming events" flier to keep himself on message.

Later, at a V.V. Reid Elementary School open house, Benjamin handed out that events card to a supporter wanting to know how she could help the campaign.

"What's this writing on the back?" she asked.

"Don't worry about it," he said.

Benjamin worked his way to the back of the room, where authors were selling books. He bought several, including "Aloma and the Red Suitcase" by Sonja T. Williams. He asked Williams whether she could break a $100 bill.

"Oh, no," she said.

"No problem," said Benjamin, as he reached behind him to take a $5 bill from his communications director.

The open house pushed Benjamin's schedule back, making him late for Kids Day at Finlay Park, where he was supposed to meet his wife, DeAndrea, and two daughters, Bethany, 5, and Jordan, 2.

On the way to the park, Benjamin got a call from his wife, who pops up on his cell phone as "The Honorable DeAndrea Gist Benjamin" - a nod to her position as a municipal judge.

"'How am I?' or 'Where am I?'" he asked. After a pause, he said, "I'm great."

At the park, Benjamin took a break from campaigning to take his daughters on a pony ride. Afterward, he walked hand in hand with his oldest, Jordan, as she told jokes like, "What did the taco say to the burrito?" (Answer: Where have you bean?)

In the afternoon, Benjamin stopped to knock on doors in Earlewood Park. He didn't knock on just any door. He knocked on the doors of the voters his campaign had identified as "undecided."

The campaign knows this because they have spent countless hours calling every registered voter in the city and asking them. At the first house, a woman answered the door and politely listened as Benjamin made his pitch. She thanked him without giving much of an indication of who she will vote for.

As he walked down her front steps, Benjamin circled a 3 by her name on the list of voters. A 1 means the person is voting for him, and a 5 means the person would never vote for him. Three is undecided.

But Benjamin has a rule: If he sees anyone standing outside, even if they are not on his list, he stops to talk with them.

Barry McElveen was cutting grass in his yard, mowing around his "Finlay for Mayor" yard sign as Benjamin approached. McElveen shut the lawn mower off, and before Benjamin could introduce himself he said, "What are you going to do about downtown?"

Benjamin explained his vision of luring the USC Law School to replace SCANA on Main Street, saying the influx of 700 young people downtown would bring retailers back.

McElveen is not convinced.

"I think the university is taking up too much of our town now," he said. "I don't see how that is going to bring life downtown."

Benjamin and McElveen talked for about 10 minutes, and McElveen told him the reason he put a Kirkman Finlay sign in his yard was because at a mayoral forum the previous week he "was the only one of you guys who listed Main Street (as a priority). That's the only thing we're interested in."

McElveen eventually seemed to warm up to Benjamin, enough for Benjamin to ask him to "keep an open mind," on election day. McElveen said he would.

"The key to being an effective leader is, even when you disagree, don't be disagreeable," Benjamin said later.

At 4 o'clock, Benjamin attended the People Over Politics mayoral forum at the Cecil Tillis Center, next to the new Celia Saxon neighborhood, which was once a public housing project. Benjamin, Morrison and Joseph Azar were the only candidates to show up, along with a handful of people watching.

The forum turned into a round-table discussion about the election. When Benjamin wasn't talking, he was on his smartphone.

"Wasn't it in the last election we had only 10,000 people vote?" Azar asked the group.

"13,041," Benjamin said, without looking up.

It was at the end of his day that Benjamin hit the barbershops and hair salons. As he left Mary's Beauty Salon on Gervais Street, he approached some cars waiting at a red light and introduced himself.

He spotted a group of adults and children in a parking lot returning from an outing and strode over to say hello. Along the way, he passed a boy and handed him a postcard.

"Hey buddy," he said. "Give it to your mama."