Candidate for
Mayor; City of Sacramento

Julie Padilla was born and raised in Sacramento. The daughter of long-time community activists Leonardo Padilla and RosAngélica Moreno, Julie is a first generation Mexican American whose first language was Spanish. Julie attended Natomas grade school then St. Francis High School where she was valedictorian of her graduating class. Having been accepted to Harvard, Yale and Princeton, Julie chose to stay close to her family and to Sacramento and matriculated at Stanford University where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Latin American Studies and a Master of Arts in Latin American Literature. Julie went on for further study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she received a Master of Fine Arts in Acting while teaching theatre to undergraduate theatre majors.

Julie has put her performing arts background to public use. Right out of college she directed an at-risk youth theatre group for high school students, and she taught Mexican dance to children at the Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco. Here in Sacramento Julie has put on benefit performances for the Sacramento AIDS Foundation; she performed the one-woman musical "Magdalena" to benefit her high school scholarship fund; and Julie is perhaps best known in Sacramento for having written, produced and performed her one-person show "You Don't Look Mexican" which in 1998 toured the western United States. (This show was also staged as a benefit for Cuban relief efforts.)

An outsider to mainstream politics in Sacramento, Julie worked as an intern in Congressman Matsui's Washington, D.C., office. It was here that Julie learned not only the value of good government, but the importance of strong, effective leadership as well. Julie has most recently worked with the Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee (SHOC), with the Southside Park and East Sacramento neighborhood associations in their efforts to achieve more equitable distribution of social services, and with the Instituto Mazatlán de Bellas Artes, a fine arts organization that provides cultural arts programs for children. Julie is also currently on the steering committee for the Sacramento Citizens for Safe Drinking Water.

Julie and her partner in life, Paul Smith, are extremely proud to be the parents of a two-year-old boy named Río Samuel. The family, which includes a 10-pound poodle and two frogs, currently resides in Land Park.