In an interview with Zap2it, Mike Schur discusses the topics mentioned above [warning: minor spoilers].

Excerpt:
And now that Ben is no longer a government employee, is there any way he doesn’t become Leslie’s campaign manager?

“Without wanting to be too spoilery about it, that’s the main issue of the first episode back,” Schur says. “We were originally going to deal with it in the Christmas episode, but there was so much going on already. … We wanted to keep the issue of Ben and his potential role in the campaign out of it. He had his own little journey he was on, so we just wanted to keep it away.