Representative Cleveland Keith Benedict

Cleveland Keith Benedict (born March 21, 1935) is an American politician and public servant who represented West Virginia’s 2nd congressional district for one term in the United States House of Representatives from 1981 to 1983 as a member of the Republican Party. He was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the son of Cooper Procter Benedict (1907–1968) and Laura DeLamater Benedict Beury (1911–d.). His parents married on April 14, 1934. He had a younger brother, Oakley DeLamater Benedict (1938–1940), who died in early childhood and was named after their maternal grandfather, and a younger sister, Elizabeth Hasbrouck Benedict Rice (b. 1941), named after their maternal grandmother. Benedict was named after his paternal grandfather, the Rev. Cleveland Keith Benedict (1864–1936). Through his father, he is a descendant of Procter & Gamble co-founder William Procter and of Aaron Cleveland IV, great-grandfather of the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, Grover Cleveland. On his mother’s side, he descends from the Hasbrouck family, industrialist Cornelius H. DeLamater, and Louis DuBois, a patentee and founder of New Paltz, New York.

Benedict was educated at The Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1953. He then attended Princeton University, where he studied history and earned an A.B. degree in 1957. As part of his undergraduate work at Princeton, he wrote a senior thesis titled “The Rise of the Natural Sciences and their Impact upon Oxford and Cambridge,” reflecting an early interest in the intersection of intellectual and institutional development. On August 10, 1957, shortly after his graduation, he married Ann Farrar Arthur (1933–2021), a native of Winchester, Virginia, in a ceremony held in Winchester. The couple had three children: Cooper Procter Benedict II, Ruth Farrar (Benedict) Mercer, and author and college professor Pinckney Arthur Benedict. Pinckney Benedict later named his son Cleveland Keith Benedict III in honor of his father and great-grandfather. After Princeton, Benedict attended a school for cattlemen in Kansas, training for an agricultural career, and subsequently settled near Lewisburg in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, where he established and operated a dairy farm.

Benedict’s early public career developed within West Virginia state politics. As a Republican in a predominantly Democratic state, he became active in party affairs and agricultural and economic issues. He held several appointed positions in the Republican state administration of Governor Arch A. Moore Jr. from 1969 to 1977, gaining experience in state government and policy implementation. In 1970, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the West Virginia State Senate from the 11th District, an early bid for elective office that nonetheless increased his visibility within the state Republican Party and among rural and agricultural constituencies.

In 1980, Benedict emerged as the Republican nominee for the United States House of Representatives in West Virginia’s 2nd congressional district. The seat was open following the retirement of long-serving Democratic incumbent Harley O. Staggers. The Democratic Party had undergone a bruising 10-way primary, and its nominee faced the additional burden of voter dissatisfaction with the outgoing federal administration of President Jimmy Carter and the state administration of Governor Jay Rockefeller. Although both Carter and Rockefeller carried West Virginia statewide, they lost the 2nd District by large margins, creating a favorable environment for a Republican challenger. Benedict won the general election and entered the 97th Congress on January 3, 1981. During his single term in the House of Representatives, from 1981 to 1983, he contributed to the legislative process as part of a Republican delegation from West Virginia during a significant period in American political and economic history. He was appointed to the influential Committee on Energy and Commerce, where he participated in deliberations on energy policy, interstate commerce, and regulatory issues, representing the interests of his largely rural and small-town constituents.

In 1982, at the urging of Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker, Benedict chose not to seek re-election to the House and instead ran for the United States Senate against powerful Democratic incumbent Robert C. Byrd. His statewide campaign focused heavily on Byrd’s past, including Byrd’s record of high office in the Ku Klux Klan, his avoidance of military service in World War II, and the fact that Byrd, then uniquely among members of Congress, owned no home in the state he represented. Despite mounting what was regarded as the last serious and well-funded effort to unseat Byrd—his campaign spent $1,098,218—Benedict was defeated in the November 1982 election. His decision to leave a relatively secure House seat for a difficult Senate race effectively ended his brief congressional career.

Following his Senate defeat, Benedict continued in public service at the federal level. He was appointed a deputy assistant secretary in the United States Department of Energy, where he drew on both his legislative experience from the Committee on Energy and Commerce and his background in agriculture and resource issues. Returning to electoral politics in West Virginia, he ran in 1988 for statewide office as commissioner of the West Virginia Department of Agriculture. In that race he won by a large margin, reflecting his longstanding ties to farming and rural communities and his reputation as a working dairy farmer. Benedict served a single term as agriculture commissioner and chose not to seek re-election in 1992. Instead, he entered the 1992 gubernatorial race as the Republican nominee. In the general election, a three-way contest, he was defeated by a large margin, finishing behind incumbent Democratic Governor Gaston Caperton.

In the years following his statewide campaigns, Benedict retired from the pursuit of elective office and returned to his dairy farm near Lewisburg, largely stepping back from day-to-day partisan politics. Nonetheless, he remained intermittently active in public affairs and party activities. He served as a delegate to the 1996 Republican National Convention, even as he notably supported Democratic gubernatorial nominee Charlotte Pritt that year; Pritt had been one of his opponents in the 1992 governor’s race, running as a Democrat against both Benedict and Governor Caperton. In 2000, Benedict was again elected as a delegate-at-large to the Republican National Convention, this time committed to George W. Bush; in that contest he received the second-largest number of votes among delegate candidates. Continuing to engage in local and environmental issues, in 2006 he opposed the construction of a 124-turbine, $300 million Beech Ridge Energy wind farm in Greenbrier County, reflecting his ongoing interest in land use, rural quality of life, and the impact of large-scale energy projects on his community.