Photo courtesy of Ashley Powell Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) has always played a large role in Ashley Powell’s life. For as long as she can remember she has volunteered with her family, helped the homeless in Santa Monica and on Venice Beach and has been civically active since the first time she voted at 18.
This year, the fourth-generation Angeleno/Santa Monica native is not only focused on repairing the world as a whole, but she’s also on the ground, going door-to-door, campaigning to be Santa Monica’s first Jewish millennial city council member.
The 29 year old attributes her success and stride to her “new spine.”
Last year she underwent spinal reconstruction surgery, her fifth surgery since she was 14. While she was recovering she started planning and getting involved with several nonprofits.
One of the campaigns she worked on was for Harley Rouda, who switched to the Democratic party in order to run against Dana Rohrabacher, who had been in office since 1989 — the year Powell was born.
After spending a day walking around for 10 miles in Orange County, Powell decided she not only had the skills to run a campaign, she now had the endurance.
“I got really into it like I’d never done before,” Powell said. “I remember… I told my surgeon in New York I couldn’t have done anything that I’ve done in the past year if I didn’t have basically a new spine.”
A month later she decided to run for city council.
Many took notice when Powell entered the race. Rather than looking at her experience — which includes being an an alumnus of Santa Monica Community College, Occidental College, the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and the Sol Price School of Public Policy at USC, working on various campaign trails and being the youngest board member of United in Harmony nonprofit organization — it was her age that many chose to recognize.
“I have been ridiculed from the beginning for being the youngest person running, that I’m inexperienced, which is not true…which is not fair because they don’t really say that about men,” she said. “Yesterday I was told that I was too arrogant and I just laughed because I was really insecure growing up. I just changed my mindset that my lack of confidence came from my illness and now I take all these things and I go harder every day.”
For the past year, Powell said she has been listening to the needs of her community by utilizing her social work experience to win this campaign.
She’s also said she is passionate about social rights for everyone and reducing the number of homeless people on the street by increasing outreach programs for those in need.
According to Powell, 70 percent of Santa Monica residents are renters so she also plans to “build affordable housing so we can all afford to live in Santa Monica.”
“There’s no changemaker running,” Powell said. “Look, I’m from Santa Monica I’ve been involved in social justice from a young age and the same issues are still [here] from when I was young… I saw a post from Nextdoor basically saying ‘we gotta get the incumbents out of office who have been there since I was in elementary school.’”
Though Powell considers herself to be a Democrat, this election is nonpartisan. She spent a large portion of her campaign registering both Angelenos and Santa Monicans to vote in the Nov. 6 election.
“I think something about this race is that it’s non-partisan, it doesn’t matter about what party you are, it’s who you are as a person and what you are fighting for.”
Ashley Powell is running in the 2018 Santa Monica City Council race against fellow newcomers Geoffrey Neri, Greg Morena and Scott Bellomo, as well as incumbents Pam O’Connor, Kevin McKeown and Sue Himmelrich.
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