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by WILL FOLKS
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It’s been a tough few decades for South Carolina’s capital city – a municipality desperately in search of an identity as it sits sandwiched between a pair of rising, thriving metropolitan areas rich in cash and culture. While historic Charleston and ascendant Greenville have both seen significant population growth, economic expansion and municipal revitalizaton in recent years, the Palmetto State’s capital city of Columbia has struggled to keep up on each of those fronts.
During the last economic downturn (following the collapse of the subprime mortgage market), Columbia was famously described as the “face of the recession.”
Five years ago, we penned an extensive column on the capital’s struggles – highlighting a competitive analysis prepared for the city by economist Rebecca Gunnlaugsson.
Gunnlaugsson’s conclusion? Columbia was not competitive because the city’s previous leadership was holding it back with high taxes, duplicative government and crony capitalist misadventures. Frankly, we would have added rampant corruption and shameless self-dealing to that list – as personified by the city’s former mayor, Steve Benjamin.
“Upon taking office, Benjamin charted an anti-competitive, fiscally unsustainable course for the city,” I noted back in 2021.
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That’s putting it politely, actually. Despite the mainstream media prostrating itself before him, Benjamin ran the city into the ground.
“Columbia is in desperate need of a vision for the future of its municipal government that puts core functions first and focuses on reducing the tax burden for all citizens and businesses,” I wrote back in 2021. “Clearly, the city cannot tolerate any more corruption, cronyism or crime.”
Thankfully, four years ago city voters rejected Benjamin’s longtime crony – Sam Johnson – and another elected leader who was part of the problem with its municipal government. Instead, they installed city councilman and local small business owner Daniel Rickenmann as mayor.
That fall, voters also installed another up-and-coming leader – management consultant Aditi Bussells – on Columbia’s city council. Bussells actually led all municipal vote-getters (including Rickenmann) with 10,635 total votes (or 53.82% of all ballots cast) in her victorious bid for the city’s at-large council seat.
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While FITSNews has been critical of some of the city’s recent moves, we must admit its new regime has dramatically outperformed expectations – and substantially outpaced the performance of its predecessors. In addition to landing more than $1 billion in new capital investment, the city is finally starting to see a steady influx of new residents – while new and existing residents have benefitted from vastly improved city services. Permitting has been streamlined, transparency has been instituted and with Benjamin out of office, cronyism has seen a marked retreat.
Downtown’s Finlay Park – neglected for years and effectively abandoned to drug addicts and the homeless – is in the midst of a major revitalization, with its grand reopening currently scheduled for November 15, 2025.
First responders have also seen a long-overdue pay raise, which Rickenmann, Bussells and other reformers adopted without a corresponding tax hike.
Speaking of the homeless, Bussells and other city leaders have launched a rapid shelter initiative in an effort to truly start tackling this epidemic – creating a first-in-the-southeast transitional housing project that has drawn rave reviews from local business leaders.
“This is a great first step in really solving the biggest problems that we’ve had in Columbia,” city chamber of commerce leader Carl Blackstone said upon the program’s launch in 2022.
Over the past four years, Columbia has also become more of a meritocracy… as opposed to the results-challenged “crony kleptocracy” that ruled under Benjamin and Johnson.
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“I hope they can see the positive progress,” Rickenmann said earlier this year in launching his reelection. “I hope they can see we’re the Capital City again – we’re no longer being pushed away by our sister cities. We’re seeing positive growth all across the board.”
People are seeing positive progress in Columbia… in fact, they’re seeing it all the more clearly every time they are reminded of the consequences of the prior regime.
Why, then, would voters choose to go back to the failed policies of the past? Why would they install a slate of candidates likely to reprise the malaise – and malfeasance – that marked Columbia’s competitive decline under Benjamin?
Good question…
Bussells is currently running for reelection in her at-large district against Johnson – the aforementioned ex-mayoral crony and current chief executive officer of Civint. This company, founded by Benjamin, represents private entities seeking to land business from local governments
They are takers not makers… in other words.
City leaders are fearful Johnson, if elected, would push vendors and clients based on their connections to his firm – not any value they may provide to the city. They are also fearful his election – and the elevation of two other Benjamin cronies to posts within city government – would essentially put the former mayor back in power in the Palmetto State capital.
And all that entails…
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RELATED | CITY OWES MILLIONS IN DOWNTOWN DEBACLE
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Bussells, on the other hand, has no business interests before the city. All of her votes have been – and will continue to be – based on what she genuinely believes is in the best interest of her constituents.
“I promised to turn a vision for Columbia’s future into real results,” Bussells told FITSNews. “That’s exactly what we’ve done. From increased transparency and a more customer-service-oriented culture in city government to refocused priorities on public safety and neighborhood investments, we’ve shown what responsible leadership looks like. Columbia is better today because we’ve stayed focused on solutions that last.”
While Bussells is running on her record of accomplishment, Johnson is campaigning on his record with Benjamin – including the oft-delayed, over-budget and yet-to-be-completed Bull Street Boondoggle. He’s also proposing a constitutionally dubious ban on “ghost guns” and taxpayer-funded investments in “arts and culture.”
But that’s not all he’s running on… there’s an ugly strain of race-based identity politics permeating this election.
“You need someone that looks like you,” Johnson told a mostly black audience at a recent candidate forum sponsored by the Wylie Kennedy Family Center.
Wait… what?
Johnson has also boasted of standing up to former governor Nikki Haley – and bragged about how adeptly he has handled the other “Nikki Haleys of our state.” That’s a clear shot at Bussells, who – like Haley – is Indian-American. Internet trolls have picked up this low-hanging fruit and run with it, bashing Bussells as “Nikki Lite.”
Our media outlet hasn’t covered a ton of municipal election drama this cycle, but this race offers such a stark, binary choice it felt appropriate to weigh in… or, perhaps more accurately, it felt wrong to stay on the sidelines. And with early voting set to commence on Monday (October 20, 2025), the timing for such a foray seemed apropos.
Columbia is my home town: I was born there, spent a ton of my youth there, attended church and college there and continue to do a lot of business there. I hated seeing what became of the city under Benjamin and his cabal – and I firmly believe a return to that model of leadership would be a terrible mistake. While I have plenty of beef with the current leadership of the city – it’s impossible to ignore the progress Columbia has made in the last four years on multiple key fronts.
Starting Monday, Columbians should vote to keep that progress going… and vote against returning to the failed cronyism of the past.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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3 comments
The homelessness under Rickenmann does not seem better. It actually seems worse, they sleep on the sidewalks and in alleys right off main street in broad daylight. They relieve themselves in public as well as other things and no one seems concerned with that. The opening of Finley park will really be interesting.
Too bad Columbia has no choices for Mayor but anti-2A liberals. Aditi Bussels would love for state pre-emption on gun laws to go away so she could pass a lot of the stupidity Columbia has tried to enact in the past. Thankfully, we have state pre-emtion on gun laws. Of course, the other choices are no better, sad to say.
Thank God this is an op-ed instead of the truth. Rickenmann’s “success” is largely based on initiatives while Benjamin was in office…Bull Street District, Soda City Market, Finlay Park, etc. in fact, going back to Mayor Bob’s days where he fought hard just to get a Mast General store on Main Street b/c the good ole boys wanted Columbia to remain stagnant. I’m critical of Columbia’s growth as well but giving credit to the current mayor when the groundwork has been laid is simply erroneous. Rickenmann should have continued the Famously Hot New Year which generated much-needed numbers in the hospitality industry. I’m not excited about any of the mayoral candidates this go round.