Episode 23 - Former Rep. Ben McAdams on Congressional Function and Dysfunction, Ideas for Reform, Pelosi, Biden, Trump, and So Much More

I hope he wouldn’t take offense to my saying this, but Ben McAdams is a wonk. He’s kind, he’s smart, he’s pragmatic, and he really, really knows his stuff. He represented Utah’s 4th District in Congress from January 2019 to January 2021 during the back half of President Trump’s first term. To get there, he ran through the gauntlet of an R+19 district, beating a popular incumbent by 674 votes. The flagrantly gerrymandered 4th District was the most conservative district in the entire country to be represented by a Democrat over those two years. He lost his race for reelection by a few thousand, which might seem like a large margin once you hear 674, but was the fifth-closest out of the 435 races run in 2020.

Born and raised in Utah, McAdams was bitten by the political bug in undergrad at the University of Utah, when encouragement from a professor and the free buddy pass of a friend who worked for Delta brought him to President Bill Clinton’s second inaugural address in January 1997. That prompted McAdams to intern for Ralph Becker, then a member of Utah’s state senate. After graduation, he attended Columbia Law School—as did his wife, whom he had known since high school and married before leaving Utah—and spent a few years practicing at one of Wall Street’s top firms, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, before returning to Utah. Not long later, he was poached from a new firm by his old boss, Becker, now mayor of Salt Lake City. McAdams served as a senior advisor to Becker, and spearheaded efforts to gain the conservative state legislature’s agreement to stand aside and let the mayor lead Salt Lake City in keeping with the more progressive politics of its residents. That led McAdams to his own stint in the state senate, and then to a term and a half as mayor of Salt Lake County—the second term being interrupted by the fact he needed to be sworn in as a member of the United States House of Representatives.

Now out of politics, McAdams is having what seems to be an awfully good time using his background in law and especially as a county mayor to advise state, county, and city governments on creating revenue and other public benefits from government-owned real estate through public-private partnerships. As it turns out—perhaps this isn’t a surprise—governments often hold millions and even billions of dollars worth of real estate that isn’t really benefiting much of anyone—and that they might not even know about. McAdams is trying to change that—to help other governments do what he did when he led Salt Lake County.

McAdams joined me last week to discuss his path to politics, what it was like running for and serving in Congress, why he didn’t support Representative Nancy Pelosi in her bid to again serve as Speaker of the House, and his views on the Biden administration and the Trump administration so far.

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