Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from my December 2024 conversation with Ben McAdams. Excerpts will be published serially in the lead-up to posting the full conversation. 

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Mayoral Campaign

Aiden Singh: By this point, you've run in a Utah state senate special election. You've also run in a state senate general election. Obviously, the special and the general elections were quite different. 

Now you're running for the mayor. 

How different was running for Mayor of Salt Lake County vs running for a seat in the Utah state senate?

Ben McAdams: Well, first of all, it was a very competitive race.

Running for state senator, I knew that I was likely to win the election. I was campaigning because it's the right thing to do, and because I wanted to. It's an important rite of passage. 

But the mayoral campaign I was likely going to lose and a good campaign could make the difference. So I had to work hard.

It was also the year that Mitt Romney was running for president. And Romney was obviously very, very popular in Utah. So all of the pundits predicted that Romney running would lift Republicans in the state - they felt that Romney’s coattails meant that there was zero chance of me ever winning that election. So I was certainly the underdog. 

So in that election, a good campaign could make the difference. It was going to be a hard fought campaign and I had to work hard.

We had about a $1,000,000 campaign. I knew we'd have to get up on TV as part of that campaign. We built a big campaign staff. 

I felt like I had to run two campaigns at the same time. 

I ran this big campaign where we were talking to a 1,000,000 people through TV, mailers, and radio. That could get us to the point, we hoped, where the race would be neck and neck. 

And then I felt I needed to run a very retail one-on-one campaign to get that extra 1% and to move just a few voters over to the other side. We targeted those areas where we felt there were swing voters. And we had a very robust door-to-door campaign, going out and knocking on doors and talking individually to voters. 

So we were doing both. 

The weekend before election was kind of my ‘Dewey Defeats Truman moment’. 

The Salt Lake Tribune ran a poll - I still have the newspaper - showing that I was going to lose that election by 10 percentage points. 

But we had done some internal polling that showed a close neck and neck race. Our polling was - the polling industry would not have considered our polls high quality. They were kind a robocall and saying, press 1 if you support Ben McAdams, press 2 if the other guy. And those aren't of high quality. But it was all we could afford. And those polls indicated the race was very close. 

So we went back to the Salt Lake Tribune and said, ‘we think your polling is wrong’ and talked them through it.And they went back to their pollster, and their pollster realized that he had made a mathematical error. 

And so, on election day, the Tribune printed a front page story retracting their previous poll and saying this is a really close race.

When you’re running you really care about that because, if a voter who might vote for you sees that you're losing by 10 percentage points, they may say, “Oh, I'm busy why bother turning up to vote for a candidate who’s going to lose; I’m just not going to vote because the race is already over”.

And we thought it was actually a close race - even though we didn't have high quality polling - so we didn't want our voters staying home.

I ended up winning that race by 10 percentage points that race, so it was a big margin victory. 

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Never Underestimate An Opponent

Ben McAdams: One of the takeaways from that was, you know, my opponent was so confident in his victory that he had spent the month of September during the ramp up to the election, interviewing potential people that he wanted to hire. So he was doing job interviews for the office he assumed he was going to win and not campaigning.

But I felt that we were in a neck and neck race.

And we had a theory, a strategy. I've been an advocate for mass transit and we felt that people in the conservative suburbs who rode mass transit were a demographic that we could swing over our way. So at 6 AM to 8 AM every morning, I was out in the suburbs at the light rail stops talking to people as they were commuting into the city. And then we'd go to the light rail stops in the city as people were commuting home and shake hands, hand out brochures, and talk to people. 

So we were working from 6 AM to 11 PM. 

I remember at one point, I got sick - had a flu bug. But we had to raise money for to keep the campaign going - you're kind of hand-to-mouth in that campaign. So we knew that I needed to raise about $10,000 a week to make payroll and to keep the campaign running, which is really nerve wracking. So we’re doing all this retail politics in the morning and evenings. And then in the middle of the day, we’re trying to raise money. But I remember getting sick with the flu bug. And if I didn't bring in $10,000 that week, the campaign was going to shut down. 

So I still remember, and my staff will remind me of this, laying on the floor of the campaign office. I had a popcorn bucket under one arm in case I vomited. And I was laying on the floor dialling and asking for campaign donations. Because that's what it was going to take to keep enough gas in the tank to keep the campaign running, and hopefully win the race.

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The Ben Bus

Ben McAdams: Our polling showed me in August losing by 10 points. And we were looking at how to break through and convey to people who I am in a catchy and memorable way. 

And one night, we came up with this idea that we wanted to get a bus as a campaign vehicle. So I found on the online classified ads a school bus that had been purchased by a group of volunteer firefighters. They had modified the bus and chopped off the back of the bus and converted it into a party deck.

So they'd converted this school bus into an RV that they would use to go out and fight forest fires. They’d get the federal per diem and go out as volunteer firefighters. And they had this grill on the back of the bus. So I saw this and thought this was going to look like an FDR style whistle stop bus. 

So we bought the bus.

We paid like $2,000 for this bus. We wrapped it - I think the wrap cost $3,000. So the wrap cost more than the bus itself. And it became the Ben Bus. 

And we filmed a campaign commercial of me driving this bus around, picking up Republican mayors and Democratic mayors, showing that I had support from across the aisle. And picking up soccer moms and everybody loading them up on the bus. And it was super light-hearted, goofy, and fun.

And that ad became memorable. And we had an advertising campaign that was creative. The theme was: he’s different. And we had low budget commercials showing that I'm different and how I'm different, with this bus bringing people together and driving us into the future together. It really resonated with people.

And we saw our polling flip in a matter of a couple of weeks as this ad campaign went out there. I think people were hungry for something positive and to bring us together. 

And so I credit our hard work and also this positive unifying campaign - that’s really what helped me to win that election in 2012.

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Election Night

Aiden Singh: So you’re elected mayor. What’s election night like? How are you celebrating? Who are you celebrating with?

Ben McAdams: We had a ballroom at a hotel with other candidates. We were all together watching our returns. 

I didn't know if we were going to win. 

And then the returns started coming in and they were leaning in my direction. And it was pretty early in the night that we could tell that I was going to win this race and it wasn't going to be close. It was a 10 point win. 

My opponent called me graciously to concede. 

And I hadn't done any work for the transition into office because we were scrapping for every vote. There was no sense in thinking about who we were going to hire and what the staff was going to look like if we were to lose.

So, election night was a great celebration of winning this race that we didn't know we would win. And there’s family there. I'm there with supporters and campaign staff. And it was a great time to celebrate. 

The next morning really is where you're like, ‘oh my goodness, I won this election. Now what?’. 

But on election night, it was just a time to celebrate.

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Transition to Office

Aiden Singh: So you haven't had a chance to plan for the transition. You're trying to scrap for every vote to win this race, and you win. And now you have to immediately start planning this transition to the Mayor’s office. What what does that look like and how does that work?

Ben McAdams: So, somebody who had been crucial in my campaign was the current deputy mayor for the outgoing mayor. She had been central to my campaign and just somebody who I would call on. And so she was the first call - “what do we do now?”.

So we’re discussing everything from, do we want restructure departments and staff, to what key initiatives do I want tackle, and where do I want take the county. 

And so we start to map out these things, map out some announcements that we want to have in that transition period, and map out an inauguration. And we wanted to have a celebration to thank my supporters and campaign staff.

So it's a pretty busy couple of months to transition into that job. 

So I started working with the outgoing deputy mayor to start building some of the staff, start interviewing for potential hires that you really want to have already in position on inauguration day, so that you can hit the ground running. 

So that was the first order of business.

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