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Adam Schindler

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Adam Schindler
Image of Adam Schindler

Independent

Elections and appointments
Last election

June 7, 2022

Education

Bachelor's

Binghamton University, 1994

Graduate

George Mason University, 2002

Ph.D

University of California, Berkeley, 2008

Personal
Birthplace
Paterson, N.J.
Religion
Jewish
Profession
Writer
Contact

Campaign website

Campaign Facebook

Campaign Twitter

Campaign Instagram

Campaign YouTube

Personal LinkedIn

Adam Schindler (independent) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent California's 50th Congressional District. He lost in the primary on June 7, 2022.

Schindler completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

Adam Schindler was born in Paterson, New Jersey. Schindler earned a bachelor’s degree from Binghamton University in 1994, a graduate degree from George Mason University in 2002, and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2008. His career experience includes working as a science and medical writer. Schindler served in the first class of the AmeriCorps NCCC, a national service program.[1]

Elections

2022

See also: California's 50th Congressional District election, 2022

General election

General election for U.S. House California District 50

Incumbent Scott Peters defeated Corey Gustafson in the general election for U.S. House California District 50 on November 8, 2022.

Candidate
%
Votes
✔
Image of Scott Peters
Scott Peters (D)
 
62.8
 
168,816
Image of Corey Gustafson
Corey Gustafson (R) Candidate Connection
 
37.2
 
99,819

Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source

Total votes: 268,635
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

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Nonpartisan primary election

Nonpartisan primary for U.S. House California District 50

Incumbent Scott Peters and Corey Gustafson defeated Kylie Taitano, David Chiddick, and Adam Schindler in the primary for U.S. House California District 50 on June 7, 2022.

Candidate
%
Votes
✔
Image of Scott Peters
Scott Peters (D)
 
52.3
 
89,894
✔
Image of Corey Gustafson
Corey Gustafson (R) Candidate Connection
 
29.9
 
51,312
Image of Kylie Taitano
Kylie Taitano (D) Candidate Connection
 
9.4
 
16,065
Image of David Chiddick
David Chiddick (R)
 
5.4
 
9,333
Image of Adam Schindler
Adam Schindler (Independent) Candidate Connection
 
3.0
 
5,168

Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source

Total votes: 171,772
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Campaign themes

2022

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Candidate Connection

Adam Schindler completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Schindler's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

I am a scientist who has committed my career to advancing knowledge and improving people's lives. I received a PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, and performed research at the National Institutes of Health, Duke University. and UC San Diego. I and am an author on 12 scientific publications. I currently work as a science and medical writer in the pharmaceutical industry, where I develop documents that translate scientific discoveries into clinical treatments.

Prior to entering science, I served in the first class of AmeriCorps NCCC, a national service program, where I lived in army barracks at Aberdeen Proving Grounds (MD). My team helped build a park in Baltimore and a day care center in West Virginia, and I fought fires in Idaho.

I live in San Diego with my wife, a professor of Biology at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and two children.
  • Congress Should Serve the People. Congress should make decisions with the public good as the top priority. A Congress that is primarily concerned with raising money is not a Congress that can serve the people. The influence of money on Congress is something that I will call attention to and fight against. I will seek to reverse permissible campaign finance laws, and will advocate for greater transparency so that we know what our representatives are doing and who they are meeting. To ensure that I avoid conflicts of interests, I will not take money from corporate PACs, hold private fundraisers, or own individual stock.
  • The Time for Action is Now. We face threats to our democracy and our environment that can no longer be ignored. The future of our country depends on the actions of our leaders, yet Congress does not seem to appreciate the urgency of the moment. I will fight for action to protect our democratic freedoms, especially our right to vote, and to stop global warming so that the beauty of our country is protected for my kids and future generations.
  • We Need Better Scientific Leadership. It has been frustrating as a scientist to see how we responded to the pandemic. Decisions were made without clear reason or adequate communication with the public. Worse still, we made decisions that were not in the best interests of public health, and people suffered. A major reason for our poor response is that we have few scientists in Congress, and lack the expertise to provide oversight of our scientific agencies. To ensure that the government fulfills its obligation to protect people's well-being in the future, I will work to improve our scientific infrastructure and leadership.
As a biological scientist, I am especially interested in issues related to science and medicine. I will work to improve our healthcare system and provide affordable, comprehensive care to people. I am also interested in the environment, particularly becoming carbon neutral as soon as possible to stop climate change and protect the country. I also want to change the way things are done in Congress because it is not working for the American people.
My personal political hero is FDR, because he worked for the people and fought against wealthy interests. He did this even though he himself was from a very wealthy upbringing. He also fought back after getting polio and becoming paralyzed, an event that may have kept most people from public life. He did these because he had a passion to help people and the fighting spirit not to quit.

I take inspiration from FDR because I too have a fairly comfortable life, though I am middle-class. Prior to 6 months ago, my ambition was to own a cabin in the woods and retire early. I decided to enter the race because I wanted to make a difference. In this way I felt like I was honoring FDR, who had every opportunity and reason to choose an easy path in life, but was driven into a life of public service by his passion to help people.
I take the most inspiration for my political philosophy from the words of our founding documents, especially the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". That phrase describes what I think our government should provide to people. Life should be provided by affordable and comprehensive health care and protection by our military, liberty by upholding our democratic freedoms. The pursuit of happiness means providing access to the American dream, so that people can strive to be whatever they want. I think our government is falling short of these. Our healthcare system is inadequate and the outcomes are poor compared to other countries. Our voting rights are being stripped away. We also fail to provide access to the American dream when portions of our society do not receive the resources or opportunities to get ahead.
Integrity, honesty, ability to work with others, ability to listen to people, open-mindedness to new ideas
I am solution-oriented, flexible, and accommodating to others. Being a scientist is very project-based work, and it requires discipline to do the work over many months to see the project to completion. The projects almost never go according to plan, however, which requires flexibility to change direction while still keeping the end-goal in sight. In my current job, I do this as a leader of team of several people, so the decisions have to be made decisively and in a way that gets buy-in from the team. This requires working with others and being willing to adjust my expectations.
To answer to the best interests of the people and be accountable to them. This is a public service job and the salary and benefits are paid by taxpayers. For that reason, representatives should answer to the people.
USA defeating USSR in 1980 Winter Olympics. I was 8.
I worked in a deli for about 6 months when I was 14. I think I got paid $3 an hour, though I did get some tips. I got free soda and food and got to read magazines.
The Remains of the Day. I think the book and the movie are both terrific, a mix of history, class, love. Stevens is a tragic figure because society told him to be one way, to carry himself with restraint and honor, that he was serving a great purpose, but it was never real. It was based around the class-based society of England, a society that elevated some people above others based on nothing but birth. Once that class was brought down by WWII, there was nothing for Stevens. We want to serve others, it is a noble instinct, but often that service is used for the means of others.
Can't think of any. Would rather be a real person.
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John. I took the kids to Sing 2 and that song was in it. I had never listened closely to the lyrics. It's a great song.
The House is the body that represents the people best. Members are held to account every 2 years because they are supposed to reflect the will of the people, and the people should have a chance to decide on that frequently. The House has a great deal of power to act on the people's behalf. My frustration with the House is that it does not use that power. For instance, the House allowed the Afghanistan war to go on for 20 years and consume over 2000 American lives and $2 trillion taxpayer dollars, with almost nothing to show for it. During that time the House provided almost no oversight of how the war was going and if our money was being spent well. The House has also been largely absent in its oversight of our pandemic response, allowing it to be botched by our science agencies without any pushback.
Yes. Experience matters because it makes one more productive in the job. I will have to learn everything new, and there will be a learning curve. Still, the person matters most, and I am ready to learn everything I can as fast as I can to become effective in the job.
Restoring trust in our government. The government has lost the trust of the people. A Gallup poll (https://news.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx) in Sept 2021 found that 62% of people had "Not Very Much" or "None at All" trust and confidence in the legislative branch. This is pretty consistent with the last 10 years, but prior to 2010 those two categories never combined for more than 41% of the total. People have become more disenchanted with Congress, and that is a situation that can lead to disaster. We already had one insurrection. A major cause of the problem is the anti-government stance of Republicans, but Democrats do not help the situation by failing to provide strong leadership and clarity of purpose. It is terrible that one party has abdicated its responsibility to govern, but the answer is not to try to meet them halfway but to fight harder against them.
Appropriations

Budget
Education and Labor
Energy and Commerce
Ethics
Foreign Affairs
House Administration
Judiciary
Natural Resources
Oversight and Reform
Rules
Veteran Affairs
Ways and Means
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress

Joint Committee on the Library
Yes. The people should have a regular say in their representation. In addition, primaries should be far more common. We are depriving people of a voice when we block and blacklist primary challengers. The only people who are advantaged by this system are the current members. The people are not, because we are only given one opportunity every other year in November to make a difference, and it usually involves an easy choice between whoever your representative is and someone you would never vote for. That is not much of a voice. Instead of giving us a voice, we are told that we are making a difference by giving money. Those are not the same. We need to expand democracy, and that requires primaries. Engaging voters in the primary will engage them overall and help the party, not hurt it. If a representative can't fight for their job, they don't deserve the job.
I am against them for elected officials (since voters can make the choice) and for them for unelected officials such as judges, because people who are not accountable to the public should not be given unlimited time in office
There are many people I admire and I look forward to learning from the people there.
I have only been a candidate for a short time, but I met a California type named Steve on Pacific Beach during my first informal introduction to people, and he told me he was up from Mexico for the day, where he had to live due to cost. I told him I was running and why, about Scott Peters opposing H.R.3, and he jumped in and talked about all the dental work he had done in Tijuana because it cost a fortune north of the border. Then he said that things were more corrupt here than in Mexico. "At least in Mexico, the corruption is out in the open," he said.

This is the kind of person a lot of us in San Diego are quick to dismiss, a beach bum type living in Mexico. But he was not a bum, he was just a guy trying to work and buy things like the rest of us. He got driven away from the US, by an economy that has cut off a lot of people. The economy has become so skewed to the top that the only way to live a prosperous middle-class life in a place like San Diego to go into one of the highly profitable, high-paying sectors like health care, high tech, defense, or finance. I find it problematic that we are excluding from our communities the people who actually do the work to maintain society--teachers, police, nurses. A more balanced economy where public sector work is rewarded comparable to private sector work will be better for us all, by diversifying our cities and providing paths to a middle-class life for more people.
(Said about the Chilean miners who were rescued from a cave-in):

I liked them better when they were underground
Yes. I accept compromising on details but not on principles. Negotiating in good faith is also critical. People have to be trustworthy for compromise to happen.
Our economy should be balanced and the tax code should be fair. There is no reason for the complicated nature of our taxes. Income is income. There should be deductions and write-offs, but only for things that truly benefit society, like adoption or charitable giving. Businesses have managed to deduct things that are just part of the cost of doing business. For instance, a landlord, and I am one, can deduct depreciation, maintenance, and many other things, but a homeowner cannot deduct those same things. And while I as a landlord may benefit somewhat from these deductions, the benefit to someone like me with one property is a couple hundred dollars, whereas the benefits to the Trumps are tens of millions of dollars. The only reason many parts of our tax code exist is to lower the amount that wealthy people pay in taxes. This should change.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

Campaign website

Schindler's campaign website stated the following:

“

Money in Politics

Money is having a negative effect on our government by causing politicians to serve the interests of campaign donors instead of the people they represent.

I will work to get money out of politics so that our government answers to the people. I will fight to reverse the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that has given rise to the flood of money in politics, and will work for greater ethics from our government, including a ban on members of Congress owning stock and an end to the revolving door between lobbyists and Congress.

As a scientist, I understand how money can compromise people’s integrity, and I will not take contributions from political action committees or special interest groups.


Healthcare

Our healthcare system is expensive and inefficient. The US spends twice as much as other countries on healthcare, but is only 40th in life expectancy. I will advocate for better use of our healthcare dollars so that money goes to research and patient care instead of to company profit and executive pay.

I support giving Americans of all ages the option to get Medicare, and that Medicare should be a comprehensive health insurance program that includes dental, vision, hearing, mental health, and prescription drug benefits.

I will work to lower the cost of prescription drugs by making sure Americans don't pay more than other countries, and will advocate for the National Institutes of Health to conduct pharmaceutical research to keep costs down.


Housing & Homelessness

San Diego was recently rated the least affordable city to live in the country because the cost of living is growing faster than incomes. This is driven mostly by housing costs.

We can stabilize housing and rental prices by increasing housing supply to meet demand. I support using the resources of the federal government to partner with San Diego to develop more housing and infrastructure.

By setting aside units of new development for affordable housing and making a greater investment in support services for our unsheltered population, we can meet the housing needs of our residents.


Environmental Protection

San Diego will be impacted by global warming and sea level rise, and we need to take action now to protect our communities.

I support legislation to transition our economy from climate-heating fossil fuels to renewable sources. I will advocate for greater use of solar panels, expansion of electric car infrastructure, improved public transportation, and a greater investment in clean energy jobs here in the United States.

I will also stand up to the fossil fuel and energy lobbies that use their political influence to block legislation that would protect our environment.


Education

Education is the foundation for our future as a country, but the coronavirus pandemic showed the inequalities in our education system. While some kids stayed home for a year, other kids got in-person instruction.

As a parent of two school-aged children, I want to improve our public schools to prepare children for the world. I support hiring more teachers and paying them better to reduce class sizes and extend the school year.

At the post-secondary level, I support making college education at a public university available to all who want it without going into debt.


Immigration

Immigration has been important for San Diego to grow into the diverse city that it is. No person should be considered illegal, and I support a pathway to citizenship for people who have put down roots in the country such as DREAMers.

I support adequate funding of our border to ensure security and protect the flow of goods and people between the US and Mexico.

Another area of focus will be the visa process for visiting students and scholars. As a scientist who worked with many foreign students, I want to make the process easier for those who want to study and work in the US and the employers who seek to find them.


Veterans

San Diego has a rich military tradition and is home to many veterans. Like others in the San Diego area, veterans struggle with the high cost of living and expensive healthcare and housing.

In Congress I will work to provide comprehensive and affordable medical benefits to those who served their country along with pension benefits that allow veterans to afford living in San Diego.

I will also seek greater public services to veterans who are experiencing homelessness, mental health, or substance abuse concerns.


Taxes

The US tax code is unfair. Wealthy companies and individuals often pay tax rates that are lower than the middle class.

To make the tax code fair, I support eliminating deductions that have been written into the tax code to benefit the wealthy.

Tax rates should be set at a level sufficient to fund the needs of the United States without incurring excessive debt.

The tax code should also be simpler for people so that filing taxes is not burdensome and expensive.


Voting Reforms

Voting is the most important power we have in our democracy, but it is under attack from people who want to take that power away.

I will fight against efforts to restrict voting and subvert our democracy, and I will advocate for making voting easier.

I support reforms to our voting laws that promote greater democracy, including rank-choice voting, open primaries, and an end to partisan gerrymandering.

As an Independent, I will advocate for opening our political system to other parties and Independents.


LGBTQ Rights

LGBTQ individuals face discrimination that has adverse effects on quality of life. More than 1 in 3 LGBTQ Americans and 3 in 5 transgender people faced discrimination last year.

I support equal rights and liberties for all people, including those in the LGBTQ communities, and I will work to overcome the discrimination that LGBTQ individuals face in healthcare, housing, and workplace rights. I will fight against prejudice and be on the side of the LGBTQ community in advancing civil rights.


Seniors

Seniors are an important part of our community and should be able to live with dignity. Seniors are vulnerable to the high cost of living, especially increasing costs of healthcare and housing. I will protect Social Security and will work to lower the cost of healthcare.

Unlike Scott Peters, the incumbent in District 50, who voted against lowering drug prices, I will fight to keep costs down by giving Medicare the ability to negotiate on price. I will also work to expand Medicare so that it covers dental, vision, hearing, and psychological health.


Women’s Health

Reproductive health is fundamental to women’s healthcare, but those services are under attack in many parts of the country. I will fight against efforts to cut off women’s healthcare, and will advocate for greater access to reproductive services including birth control, abortion, and pre-natal care.

Women’s well-being is affected by the challenges of working and raising a family, and I will advocate for the government to provide affordable daycare services and universal pre-K to help children and their families.[2]

”
—Adam Schindler's campaign website (2022)[3]

See also

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    Footnotes

    1. ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on December 27, 2021
    2. ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
    3. ↑ Schindler 4 Congress, “The Issues,” accessed May 19, 2022


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