To readers of The Arizona Republic, Steve Benson was a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who skewered politicians, public figures and pundits with equal delight.
Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, though, more often recognized Benson — who died last week at 71 of complications from a 2024 stroke — as the grandson of church President Ezra Taft Benson, an archconservative and secretary of agriculture in President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration.
The younger Benson followed in his famous relative’s conservative footsteps for decades as The Republic’s right-wing cartoonist, but, in 1993, that all changed after he publicly called out his church for hiding his aging grandfather’s failing mental acuity.
And that “led to his break from Mormonism and religion altogether,” according to an appreciation in The Arizona Republic. “He and his family left the church and Benson became an atheist, a free thinker, who hewed to the evidence of science and discovery over what he saw as religious poppycock.”
After that, he went from “bomb-throwing right-winger,” TheRepublic piece explains, “to Molotov-slinging left-winger.”
Among Benson’s most memorable cartoons were those that mocked Arizona’s then-governor, Evan Mecham, a Latter-day Saint whom the paper describes as “a bumbling former state lawmaker and car dealer who in a fluke three-way race for governor won the seat on the Ninth Floor and brought his cracked brand of right-wing politics to office.”
The cartoonist “drew Mecham with big ears and broad boomerang smile, landing one harpoon after another,” the paper writes. “Many right-wing members of the LDS Church in Arizona began to complain to Salt Lake City, and soon LDS leadership was inquiring of Benson what was going on.”
Benson’s response? He was “a journalist doing his job,” The Republic’s writer says, “without fear or favor.”
The Salt Lake Tribune’s recently retired cartoonist, Pat Bagley, came to know Benson in 1978 as a student at church-owned Brigham Young University, where they both penned cartoons for the student newspaper, The Daily Universe.
He was, Bagley says in an email, “my friend and sometime rival.”
The faculty adviser hired the future Tribune cartoonist “for the summer and kept us both on when Steve returned that fall,” Bagley recalls. “Thus began a rivalry. My stuff was loose and Steve’s was polished. Twice a week we vied for the attention of 25,000 students. Mostly it was campus-centered issues, but sometimes veered into national politics. We were both conservative, but there’s conservative and then there’s conservative.”
While Bagley and Benson studied political science, one professor attempted to broaden student views, Bagley recalls, by bringing to the class a member of the right-wing John Birch Society and then a communist.
“Steve ratted out the professor to BYU administrators, [believing godless ideas had no place in the Lord’s university],” Bagley says. “The professor was reprimanded.”
After his politics swung in the other direction, Benson won a Pulitzer Prize for his national and international commentary.
“His stuff was unarguably very good,” says Bagley, himself a 2014 Pulitzer finalist, “and deserving of the award.”
But, The Tribune cartoonist says, Benson should have won the Pulitzer sooner — with his Mecham cartoon.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Steve Benson in 1995.
At the same time, with his large extended family, Benson was “an enduring example of devotion…and the rights of all,” according to the family obituary posted on Facebook. “To those who knew him best, Steve’s greatest masterpieces were not drawn for news outlets but, instead, were drawn for birthdays, wedding celebrations, and as holiday cards — delightful caricatures he gifted generously to friends, family, and colleagues. His personalized sketches became treasured keepsakes, just as his published cartoons became cultural snapshots.”
Benson was “always ready with his sketch pad, a clever joke, a magic trick,” the family writes, “and a hearty laugh.”
He is survived by his wife, Claire, three children and seven grandchildren, the obit says, “along with a wide circle of family, friends, colleagues, and readers who will miss his fearless voice and his kind heart.”
There will be a private memorial service.