Candidate for
United States Representative; District 10

Adriel is a native Northern Californian, and has lived in the East Bay with his wife, Yuki, for the past decade. Adriel and Yuki have two young sons, and live in affordable housing next to the Dublin BART station. Their first son begins kindergarten this fall.

Adriel was born in Modesto, CA, in 1978, and lived in the San Joaquin Valley until the age of 10, when his missionary family moved to Lae, Papua New Guinea. For a boy of 10, New Guinea was paradise. Each day of playing shirtless in the sun, jumping the drainage ditches running down every street and eating roasted peanuts bought from street-market women was an adventure. After returning from six months overseas, his family settled in Valley Springs, where his parents and youngest sister live today.

Adriel is the oldest of six siblings, a member of the Chickasaw Nation, and the first in his family to earn a B.A. Degree, from Cal Berkeley. His youngest brother this year became the second, also graduating from Cal. Adriel was homeschooled by his mother, and graduated from San Joaquin Delta College before transferring to Cal.

He met his wife, a Tokyo native, at Delta College. They were married in 1999. Adriel and Yuki lived briefly in Lodi, where he was a sports writer and copy editor for the Lodi News-Sentinel, before moving to El Cerrito. Adriel worked for ANG Newspapers as a copy editor and was soon promoted to News Editor of the Hayward Daily Review, going to school full time during the day and working until midnight.

Shortly before Adriel graduated from Cal in 2001, Adriel and Yuki moved to Walnut Creek and Adriel took an Assistant News Editor position at the San Francisco Examiner. At the Examiner, Adriel also worked as a city hall reporter, political columnist, City Editor, and Political Editor. He became well-known for highlighting grassroots activism and for some of San Francisco's most comprehensive political coverage. The San Francisco Sentinel named him "Person of the Year" for his coverage of the 2003 mayor's race between Gavin Newsom and Matt Gonzalez, and his political reporting has been praised by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the San Francisco Weekly, and Beyond Chron.

The roots of Adriel's desire to run for the District 10 Congressional seat started in 2002, when he objected to Rep. Ellen Tauscher's vote to authorize the Iraq War. Adriel, along with peace activists of every stripe,attended a town hall meeting on that vote, and told her that if the Democratic Party did not stand up as a clear alternative, progressive activists would be forced to run against experienced politicians like the Congresswoman. At the time, two of Hampton's brothers were in the armed forces, and one was later stationed with the Marines in Ramadi, Iraq.

In 2005, eager to have a free hand to engage in political activism, Adriel accepted a job as an investigator in the San Francisco City Attorney's Office. He immediately launched a campaign to stop a monster parking garage in Walnut Creek's Civic Park. Adriel's "Save Civic Park" group was ultimately instrumental in stopping the garage, saving a historic private home behind the park, reducing costs of the new library by millions of dollars, and sharply cutting traffic around the park. He held his June congressional campaign kickoff at the home that he helped save.

In his day job, Adriel helps defend city departments from lawsuits and prosecute employee misconduct cases. In 2008, he served as volunteer communications director for Daly City Councilman David Canepa's successful bid to unseat an incumbent, volunteered on President Obama's campaign, and joined efforts to block the Bush bank bailout. Also in 2008, Adriel became a leading advocate in the "Government 2.0" movement, urging the use of new technologies to make government more collaborative, transparent and responsive. This year, Adriel founded Gov 2.0 Radio along with two-time Fed 100 award winner Steve Ressler and Deloitte new media expert Steve Lunceford.

In his free time, Adriel enjoys movies, trail running, and spending time with his wife on the Monterey Peninsula. In Congress, he hopes to work on energy independence, peace and nuclear disarmament, and contracting reforms to make government more nimble and responsive to the needs of citizens and small businesses. He also wants to use his new media skills to help other grassroots Democrats win office.