Ben McAdams

Biography

Ben McAdams is a Democratic former advisor to Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon (2007-2009), former Utah State Senator (2009-2012), the former Mayor of Salt Lake County (2013-2019), and a former Member of the United States House of Representatives (2019-2021).

As a liaison between Democratic Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon and a majority Republican Utah State Legislator, McAdams helped build consensus for ordinances designed to protect LGBT citizens from discrimination in housing and employment which were ultimately adopted, unopposed by the State Legislature.

As a Utah State Senator (2009-2012), McAdams led the drafting and adoption of over a dozen pieces of legislation aimed at reducing financial fraud within the state.

In 2012, he won the Salt Lake County mayoral race by a 10% margin of victory, despite being considered a heavy underdog.

Famously, faced with a contentious decision on where to place a new homeless shelter while serving as Mayor, and wanting to gather more data to make an informed decision, he covertly spent a night sleeping on the streets of Salt Lake City amongst the local homeless population. He spent a second night sleeping in a homeless shelter. Over those two days, he engaged with homeless citizens of Salt Lake County to find out why a homeless person would choose to rough it in the streets when a homeless shelter was available. He subsequently settled on a location for the to-be-constructed homeless shelter.

In 2019, McAdams won a tight race for Utah’s fourth Congressional district by 694 votes, a 0.257% margin of victory. As a Member of the House of Representatives, he supported keeping Obamacare in place and advocated for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

Prior to elected office, he was an attorney with Davis Polk in New York and Dorsey & Whitney in Salt Lake City, where he specialized in public and private securities transactions for U.S. and international issuers.

As the founder and CEO of the Common Ground Institute, McAdams currently advises state, county, and city governments on public policy with a focus on unlocking the value of government-owned real estate through public-private partnerships to generate non-tax revenues.