On Monday, for the ninth year in a row, John Hawkins of Right Wing News released his annual list of the 40 best conservative columnists in the country, and Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro topped the list. National Review’s Jonah Goldberg followed Shapiro at #2, and The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh followed at #3. Kurt Schlichter was #4, National Review’s David French was #5, Matt Lewis of CNN was #6, Kevin Williamson of National Reviews was #7.

It has been a steady ascent for Shapiro; last year, Shapiro was #2, trailing Goldberg; in 2015 he was #7 (Walsh was #1); in 2013 he was #15. In 2012 he was #20; in 2011 he was #22.

Hawkins, a columnist at Townhall and PJ Media, is a red-blooded conservative; he also writes for Washington Examiner, The Hill, TPNN, Hot Air, The Huffington Post and at Human Events.

It’s not altogether surprising that Shapiro rose to the top of the list in 2017 concomitant with his rising profile; in February, speaking at Ferris State University, he had a memorable exchange with a student regarding transgenderism that triggered a video seen over 47 million times; in May he dismantled the emotional appeal Jimmy Kimmel made regarding Obamacare; at the end of July he was a key witness before Congress regarding free speech on campus, where the myriad and popular Ben Shapiro Thug Life videos became part of the congressional record.

Only days later, he soundly defeated Young Turks host Cenk Uygur in a debate at Politicon; then only days after that appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast, one of Rogen’s most highly-watched episodes, which triggered Shapiro’s podcast to rise to #2 of all podcasts; followed by the back-and-forth with the University of California, Berkeley about Shapiro’s scheduled September speech, which led to national news as the city of Berkeley shelled out $600,000 for police and other protection so the city would not have a riot when Shapiro spoke.

Then, October, when Shapiro was profiled by ABC’s Nightline, to late November, when The New York Times ran a 1,700 word profile of him, to the second week of December, when Fox News named him their Power Player of the Week.

That’s a lot in one year.