Steve Benson, Provocative Editorial Cartoonist, Dies at 71

New York Times

16-07-2025

Steve Benson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for The Arizona Republic and a four-time finalist for the award, who used his razor-edged pen to mock an Arizona governor and fellow Mormon, leading to a lasting rift with the church authorities, died on July 8 in Gilbert, Ariz. He was 71.
His wife, Claire Ferguson, said the death was from complications of a stroke in February 2024. He had been under hospice care at an assisted living center.
Like most effective editorial cartoonists — whose ranks have been trimmed by the contracting newspaper industry — Mr. Benson used his unflinching opinions and a provocative drawing style to rile politicians and raise questions about moral and societal issues.
In an interview in 2017 with KJZZ Radio in Phoenix, Mr. Benson said that 'the role of an editorial cartoonist is not really to give the bottom line on anything, because all we want to do is kick bottoms and, and if it incentivizes people to jump into the — into the riot — then that's great.'
'I don't aim to please,' he often said, as his mantra. 'I just aim.'
In criticizing President Trump's insistence on extending barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018, Mr. Benson depicted President Ronald Reagan speaking before a wall topped by concertina wire and saying, 'My fellow Americans, don't build this wall.' It was a takeoff on Reagan's speech in front of the Berlin Wall in 1987, when he famously invoked the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in declaring, 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!'
In one of the 10 cartoons that earned Mr. Benson the 1993 Pulitzer in editorial cartooning, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of Israel and Secretary of State James A. Baker III are standing beside a graveyard of Jews whose tombstones say they were killed by terrorists. Mr. Shamir asks, 'I suppose you're going to blame us for this growing Jewish settlement, too, Mr. Baker?'
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.