Brian Benjamin


Brian A. Benjamin is the Senator for the 30th District of the New York Senate. He serves as the Senior Assistant Majority Leader of the Senate. He is a Democrat. The district Benjamin represents includes parts of the neighborhoods of East Harlem, Hamilton Heights, Harlem, Morningside Heights, the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, Washington Heights and Yorkville in Manhattan.

Life and career

Brian was born at Harlem Hospital in 1976. Benjamin was born to Caribbean immigrant parents before attending Brown University and later Harvard Business School. He later went on to work in finance, serve as the Richmond Field Director in Terry McAuliffe’s gubernatorial campaign and interned in the office of Bill Lynch & Associates. In 2012, he served as a delegate for President Barack Obama and as a member of President Obama’s National Finance Committee.
Formerly, he served as the Chair of Community Board #10 in Manhattan, where he fought alongside residents of Lenox Terrace against a redevelopment plan. He is an alumni-elected trustee of Brown. Benjamin attends First Corinthian Baptist Church.
In 2010, Brian Benjamin became a managing partner at Genesis, a Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprise building affordable housing in Harlem. Heavily involved in the purchase and redevelopment of deteriorating buildings from Abyssinian Development Corporation, Benjamin helped ensure that redevelopment and repair would be done with as many M/WBE partners and vendors as possible. Of the 100% affordable and environmentally sustainable apartments that resulted from the project, 20% where put aside for the homeless, and 5% for disabled New Yorkers. He was also heavily involved with partnerships with First Corinthians Baptist Church, which he is an active member of, in creating the Dream Center on 119th and the Hope Center on 114th.

Support for Barack Obama

Having been an admirer of Barack Obama since hearing the then senator speak at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Benjamin became an early supporter of Obama when he announced his presidential campaign in 2007. He was a co-founder of “Harlem4Obama” which helped encourage Harlem support for the Senator and hosted a large fundraiser for the Obama in 2008. After Obama's election, the infrastructure of “Harlem4Obama” contributed to Benjamin's organization “Young Professionals United for Change,” which instituted a mentoring program at Wadleigh School and organized young people.
In 2012, Benjamin was an Obama Delegate to the Democratic National Convention, and raised money for Obama's reelection as a member of his Young Professionals Finance Committee.

New York Senate

In 2017, Senator Bill Perkins announced that he would run for a vacant seat on the New York City Council, that had become vacant when Inez Dickens resigned to take a seat in the New York Assembly. Following Perkins' subsequent victory for the vacant Council seat, Benjamin announced that he would run to succeed Perkins in the Senate.
Because New York Law provides that Democratic Nominee in certain special elections is determined by the County Committee instead of a primary election, Benjamin was elected with 63% of the votes at a convention in March. Critics alleged that the process was controlled by Benjamin's allies, including Manhattan Democratic Party chairman and political insiders as the Democratic candidate, though Benjamin's principal opponent, Rev. Al Taylor, was endorsed by the incumbent Senator and senior members of the legislature.
Benjamin's candidacy was endorsed by numerous elected officials including, Governor Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York City Public Advocate Letitia James, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Former Congressman Charles B. Rangel, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Assemblywoman Inez Dickens, Assemblyman Robert Rodriguez, Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, New York City Councilman Mark Levine, Assemblyman Denny Farrell, Former Assemblyman Keith Wright, Former New York City Councilman Robert Jackson, Hazel Dukes, Rev. Calvin Butts, and labor unions including 1199SEIU, 32BJ, and his mother's union, Local 372 of DC37.
With the seat being overwhelmingly Democratic, Benjamin defeated Republican Dawn Simmons and Reform candidate Ruben Dario Vargas with over 91% of the vote, which had a very low turnout of 4%. He was sworn into the seat on June 5, 2017.
In the New York State Senate, Benjamin sponsored a bill to close Rikers Island, called the New York State Public Pension Common Fund to divest from private prisons, and introduced a bill to equalize maximum rent increases in rent controlled and rent stabilized apartments. He serves as the ranking member of the Civil Service & Pensions Committee.
One of Benjamin's first campaign promises was to fight for the closure of Rikers Island, and his bill to close Rikers in three years was one of the first he introduced. After violence on Rikers on Thanksgiving Day 2017, Benjamin sent a letter to the State Commission of Correction requesting a report on the state of the facility, a report which found that the City's inaction and protracted ten year proposal might require the Commission to examine steps to close Rikers faster to ensure that the constitutional rights of inmates and staff are protected. Benjamin is also a co-sponsor of bills to reform discovery, end cash bail, restore the voting rights of parolees, and end solitary confinement.
During his campaign for the State Senate, Benjamin mounted a campaign against the disrespectful rebranding of Harlem as SOHA by real estate forms. After his election, he sponsored a bill, the Neighborhood Integrity Act, to prohibit renaming neighborhoods or redefining traditional boundaries without community input. With pressure from the community rising, the real estate company dropped the SoHa rebranding effort. During his campaign, Benjamin accepted $2,500 in campaign contributions from a real estate company that owned a South Harlem condominium called “SoHa 118.” Once he learned they used the term “SoHa” he returned the donation and asked that they change the name.
Benjamin, formerly served ranking member of the Civil Service and Pensions Committee is the sponsor of a bill to divest New York's Public Pension fund from private prisons. With the Democrats retaking the majority in 2018, Benjamin was named Chairman of Committee on Revenue and Budget.

Controversies

After Success Academy Charter School chairman Dan Loeb said that State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins had done "more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood," Senator Benjamin said that the lack of serious response from founder Eva Moskowitz was not enough.
In 2017, when Benjamin was a managing partner of a real estate firm and on the verge of becoming the New York State Senate Democratic nominee, his firm was involved in a legal dispute over an alleged scheme to divert revenue from a fire sale initiated by the real estate firm. The affordable-housing firm that specializes in preserving low-income housing denied all of the allegations and the case went to arbitration.
After his election to New York State Senate, reports claimed that his former real estate company allegedly retained Benjamin as an advisor for $60,000 a year in addition to his annual $75,000 as a New York State Senator. Senator Benjamin has repeatedly denied receiving any outside income since his election, which was supported by 2018 filings with the Joint Commission on Public Ethics.
In 2018, Benjamin urged constituents to keep warm during cold months while serving on the advisory board of his former real estate company which accrued hundreds of violations, though the company and city officials maintain the issues existed prior to the company's involvement. He directed tenants to “contact his office about heat-related issues,” and “bragged about holding landlords accountable.”
A grassroots non-profit organization that actively solicited public donations was allegedly reported to have been a front for a group of Harlem elected officials. A flyer organizing a free bus trip to a conference organized by the New York State Association of Black and Puerto Rican legislators with the organization's name on it featured a picture of four Harlem Black and Puerto Rican legislators including Benjamin.
In 2014, Benjamin appeared in Oprah Winfrey Network's television show “Love in the City” as a devoted boyfriend of breast-cancer victim and entrepreneur Tiffany Jones.