[2][3] In 2018, Carpenter won election against independent candidate Shawn Butler by a significant margin, winning a 68.8% majority, despite his opponent raising and spending a much larger amount of campaign funds.
[5] In 2022 Representative Ben Carpenter staunchly opposed and voted against (Senate Bill) SB131 that was to provide additional cancer protections to firefighters in Alaska.
[9][10] In February 2020, during a budget vote in which fellow Republican David Eastman tried to add amendments eliminating a $5000 line item to be paid to Planned Parenthood to reimburse it for court fees for an earlier lawsuit against the state of Alaska, Carpenter stood by the award.
While noting that he didn't like where the money was going, he asserted the state had lost a case in court which by law required it to make the payment.
In late 2020 and early 2021, Carpenter joined many of his fellow Republicans in their attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.
[16] Carpenter later posted in support of the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, making favorable comparisons between the men and women who had stormed the US Capitol and America's decision to join World War II, saying:[17] Not too long ago, freedom loving people were faced with a choice between peace and conflict.
[18] In 2020, Carpenter attracted significant criticism when he sent a mass email to all of his colleagues, comparing health screening stickers to the yellow badges that Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust.
"[26] After attracting a fresh round of criticism from these subsequent comments, Carpenter continued to justify them, sending text messages to the interviewer, saying: "The point was that it was fear that drove him.
[18] In September and October 2020, Carpenter recanted his initial resistance to these public health measures, saying that they had been the "correct response".