Basic bio info
Ben Carson was born Sept. 18, 1951, in Detroit. His father, a Seventh-day Adventist minister, and mother divorced when Ben was 8, and he was then raised by his mother.
Carson gained prominence in the medical community during 29 years directing pediatric neurosurgery at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. Perhaps his greatest single professional achievement came in 1987, when Carson led the first successful separation of twins connected at the back of the head.
He has served on corporate boards and the governing board of Yale University, his undergraduate alma mater. In 2008, President George W. Bush awarded Carson the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor the U.S. government bestows.
Carson and his wife met as students at Yale University, and they have three sons. A devout man of faith, his family are members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
His stand (entering the race)
Washington outsider Ben Carson jumped into the Republican presidential race on Monday, May 4, aiming to mobilize voters disgusted with government and seeking a fresh, nontraditional leader. (Washington outsider Carly Fiorina announced on the same day with the same general goal in mind.)
Carson, 63, a retired African-American neurosurgeon, and Fiorina joined Latinos Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio in the race and help give the Republican campaign a jolt of racial, gender and political diversity. By comparison, the Democrats have a woman candidate in Hillary Clinton, but no Latinos or minorities.
He entered the race with a spirited rally in Detroit, his hometown. “I’m Ben Carson and I’m a candidate for president, ” he told hundreds at the city’s Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts, not far from a public high school named for him.
“We’re going to change the government into something that looks like a well-run business rather than a behemoth of inefficiency, ” he said.
The 2009 movie “Gifted Hands” featured Cuba Gooding Jr. as Carson. But the doctor’s political coming out happened when he was keynote speaker for the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast. Only feet away from Obama, Carson used his platform to disparage Obama’s health care law, the progressive income tax structure and rising national debt, among other things. In particular, the speech raised Carson’s profile as a conservative front-man on health care policy.
His support
He has been gaining momentum in the crowded Republican race for president, fueled in part by support from social conservatives.
Carson has an a personal story of growing up poor in a single-parent household in Detroit with bad grades and worse temper. Challenged by his mother, who’d completed only the third grade, to do better, Carson went on to excel in high school and go on to Yale and medical school.
Carson concedes she sometimes took welfare assistance, but criticizes a culture that he says grew up around that help — of liberal politicians offering welfare in exchange for votes. “Whenever the government would announce a new program, people were so excited, ‘Yeah, we’re going to get more goodies,’ “ he told a tea party convention in January. Carson said he learned from that upbringing that “the person who has the most to do with what happens to you in life is you. It’s not somebody else. It’s not the environment. We have got to get that message to Americans, that you are not a victim.”
He speaks openly of his childhood experience and of his faith. As a candidate, he’s declared that he’s opposed to abortion and said he supports a flat tax.
Carson has been a forceful critic of the nation’s first black president on everything from health care to foreign policy. Carson also offers himself as a counter to other notable African-American commentators with more liberal views.
Carson also spoke out on the unrest in the city where he lived for many years, where residents have protested and rioted in the wake of Freddie Gray dying while in custody of the Baltimore Police Department. In a Time op-ed, Carson decried the protests and related vandalism as “gross misconduct.”
In another example of comments that garner him support while drawing the ire of liberals, Carson’s campaign reported strong fundraising and more than 100,000 new Facebook friends in the 24 hours after he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in September: “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.”
As his critics grew louder, he only slightly retreated when a day day later in an interview with Fox News, Carson said he would be open to a moderate Muslim who denounced radical Islam as a White House candidate. But he also said he stood by his original comments, saying the country cannot elect people “whose faith might interfere with carrying out the duties of the Constitution.”
“If you’re a Christian and you’re running for president and you want to make this into a theocracy, I’m not going to support you,” Carson told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “I’m not going to advocate you being the president.”
Carson said members of the Islamic faith who are willing to accept the American way of life “will be considered infidels and heretics, but at least then I will be quite willing to support them.”
After the mass shooting in Oregon that killed nine college students, Carrson suggested the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened if Jews in Europe were better armed. He argued that gun control is a bigger tragedy than a bullet-riddled body. He said the best way to confront a mass shooter is to rush the gunman. The statements have drawn no shortage of criticism, including from public-safety experts and the FBI, but his standing in the polls did not falter after he linked Second Amendment rights to preventing the rise of a Nazi-like form of tyranny in America.
His critics
On the flip side, Carson’s controversial statements also have limited his appeal to a wider audience at times.
He once compared Obama’s health care overhaul to slavery. Yet he isn’t for the status quo for health care: Carson has blasted for-profit insurance companies; called for stricter regulations — including of prices — of health care services; and said government should offer a nationalized insurance program for catastrophic care.
Carson blasts alliances between powerful interests and the federal government, saying the system denies most Americans a real opportunity at economic advancement and political power. The challenge for Carson is to capitalize on being the anti-politician while still mounting an effective campaign. Just as important, can he avoid mistakes that hobble longshot candidates? An example from earlier this year: Carson told CNN that being gay is “absolutely” a choice; he apologized after an uproar.
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