Meet Ben.
Family matters most.
My family is my proudest accomplishment. My wife, Nan, and I were married in Orlando in 1998, and live in Central Florida. We have four adult children - Emily, Greyson, Nia, and Zack. No grandchildren yet, but Nan and I do have two grandpups: Panther, an American Bully belonging to Zack, and Emily has a Golden Retriever named Goose. We also have a grandcat named Tortilla who can hold her own against any pup!
Son of a single mom.
Born on Christmas Eve, 1957, Ben did not know his father growing up because his parents divorced when he was very young. Raised by a single mother, a Civil Service dental hygienist who often had to move around for work, including assignments at Naval Air Station Whiting Field in the Panhandle and the Air Force’s Patrick AFB between Cocoa Beach and Satellite Beach, Ben never saw his father again. His father died when Ben was a teenager. Ben knew what it was like to have to scrap for a living. He believes this experience makes him resilient and persistent in whatever tasks he takes on in life.
Early years in public service.
Ben graduated from Cocoa Beach High School in 1976, America’s bicentennial year. He attended Brevard Community College (now Eastern Florida State College) before earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in international studies from American University in Washington, D.C., while working on Capitol Hill as a congressional aide. Ben later earned his Master’s degree in American government from Georgetown University, where he was named a University Fellow.
His first professional brush with politics and policy came as a young campaign aide to then-Florida State Representative Bill Nelson, who would win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Nelson later became Florida’s state insurance commissioner, then the senior U.S. Senator from Florida, and now the 14th NASA Administrator.
Ben’s congressional staff experience included a decade working for Nelson while he was in the House, then for Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lawton Chiles, and as well as the House Committee on Energy and Commerce chaired by the late Representative John Dingell of Michigan. In addition, Ben worked as a staff member for an influential subcommittee chaired by the late James J. Florio of New Jersey, who would later serve as New Jersey’s Governor. Ben also worked on over two dozen highly competitive campaigns for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House, Florida Governor, and other races with an impressive win-loss ratio on elections.
Ben has worked on issues related to education, space, healthcare, sports, defense, international trade, veterans, oversight, and investigations.
From legislation to the World Cup.
In public and later private life, Ben worked on issues related to education, space, healthcare, sports, international trade, defense, veterans, oversight, and investigations. As a young congressional aide, he first encountered the Program Related Investment concept founded by Benjamin Franklin, which he strongly promotes today as an important element of public-private-philanthropic partnerships.
While on Congressional staff, Ben worked on many landmark pieces of legislation, including mergers and acquisitions on Wall Street, the Olympics, Superfund, Amtrak, Conrail funding, and other significant environmental legislation that became public law.
Ben ran for the Florida State Senate in 1992 with a grassroots campaign in the Orlando area that limited donations, knocked on thousands of doors, and stood on street corners meeting voters. In a reapportionment year where his district was severely gerrymandered, Ben lost his race to the eventual Lieutenant Governor of Florida, who was at the time a senior member of the State Senate.
In 1994, Ben enjoyed working as a government relations consultant for World Cup USA when the world’s most popular sport visited America, holding matches in nine U.S. venues.
A life-changing experience.
Ben was diagnosed with Stage II, Level 5 Malignant Melanoma in 2003, which, after a year of Interferon treatment, metastasized to his right lung in 2005, elevating him to a Stage IV, Level 5 cancer patient. After Ben and his family endured four surgeries and another yearlong clinical trial, he was able to beat cancer and has been cancer-free since.
The experience with cancer changed Ben’s life forever. As a result, Ben is a uniquely knowledgeable, dedicated, and motivated healthcare fundraiser and executive who believes passionately in the power of genetics, predictive health, regenerative medicine, and spiritual well-being. He is also a committed policy advocate for more collaborative cancer research and treatment options, more comprehensive education initiatives, and beneficial survivor programs using the human genome for markers in targeting cancer treatments and prevention programs.
The launch of a new party.
Ben has been a registered independent since 2012, when he realized that more moderate voters like himself did not have a home in today’s Democrat party. Ben, an author in later years, published his first political novel, Hoya: The Watchmen Waketh, in 2017, based on his political experience. His first non-fiction book, a history project, Rescuing Nicholas: The Secret Mission to Save the Tsar, was published in 2018. Sequels to the two books are forthcoming soon.
Today, Ben is the Managing Partner of Cannon & Caius, a strategic consulting practice that empowers preeminent wealth to do great social collaborative good. Knowing that independents would be a more dominant force in American politics if they were organized into a broad-based party, Ben has been organizing that effort by launching the 21st Century Democratic-Republican Party (DRP) this year. The DRP is a successor party to that formed by Declaration of Independence author Thomas Jefferson and father of the United States Constitution, James Madison, in 1792 when our nation first emerged after the American Revolution.
