Charles Benjamin grew up in Miami and Chicago, earned his Ph.D. in international relations from the University of Southern California, but ended up in Kansas fighting corporate hog farms and government bureaucrats.

“Life takes strange twists and turns,” said Benjamin, who is the outgoing lobbyist for the Kansas chapter of the Sierra Club.

Benjamin, 56, who lives in Lawrence, now is moving to Carson City, Nev., to become director of the Nevada office of Western Resource Advocates, a nonprofit environmental organization. His new job starts the first of the year.

While representing the Sierra Club since 1996, Benjamin often has been outnumbered as he goes against corporate lobbyists before unfriendly committees.

Usually toward the end of legislative sessions, he said he would think, “There has to be a better way to earn a living.”

But Benjamin said it has been worth it.

“You have to have a vision of where you want to go and you have to be persistent,” he said. “This is not for the faint-hearted. You have to have kind of a spine of steel and be willing to take rejection.”

In the past decade, Benjamin said Kansas had kept out huge corporate hog farms, improved its monitoring of water quality and moved toward development of renewable energy.

State Rep. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence, said Benjamin had been an “energetic” advocate.

Benjamin came to Kansas in 1979 to take a two-year teaching position at Bethel College in North Newton. He ended up getting elected to the Harvey County Commission, where he served for 16 years.

Then at the age of 44, he decided to start law school at Kansas University.

“My mother told me when I was teenager, my only apparent visible talent was arguing,” Benjamin said.

Always involved in environmental issues and politics, he earned his law degree and then went to work for the Sierra Club. He also recently represented neighborhood groups statewide in zoning cases.

In his new job in Nevada, Benjamin will be working on issues related to global warming while advocating for renewable energy and energy efficiency.

He has two adult children – a daughter, Anna, and son, John – who will remain in northeast Kansas.

Benjamin said he had been discouraged many times in his political and legal fights, but he added, “You have to have a sense of humor, and you have to be in it for the long term.”