Drew Ash wants to call attention to a broken political system. Ash said Democrats and Republicans aren’t enough to get the job done, and he wants to shake things up.
Ash, an IU student entering his senior year in the fall, plans to run against State Rep. Matt Pierce for the Indiana House District 61 seat as an independent.
Though he identifies as a Democrat, Ash said he believes people want a change.
“I’m hoping that independent candidates like myself in other districts have success in the future,” he said. “Establishment politics is broken and we need to end the two-party system and find new candidates who offer a refreshing set of ideas.”
A policy analysis and environmental management major in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Ash has been interested in politics from a young age, he said. While all his friends aspired to be professional athletes or movie stars, he wanted to be a politician.
With 2016 being such a wild political year, Ash thought there was no better time to begin his political career.
It was last summer he decided he would run, but not until earlier this year did he formally announce his campaign.
Ash said he and volunteers are now in the process of going door to door in order to get the 800 signatures necessary for his name to be put on the ballot.
They’re also creating a budget and website for their campaign.
Ash’s main platform is campaign finance reform. Ultimately, he said he hopes to implement a law that gets taken all the way to the supreme court.
“I think it is imperative that we get big money out of politics,” Ash said. “I think we need to put an end to politicians receiving campaign contributions from out of state. I think we need to place a limit on how much corporations and individuals can spend on elections.”
He’s also striving for a transformation of the K-12 education system, including healthier school lunches and enhanced early childhood education.
“Because at a young age our brains are sponges and it’s a great opportunity to educate students particularly in vulnerable areas,” he said.
Ash also supports making college education free for all STEM majors as well as business majors.
He has volunteered and interned on several campaigns, none bigger than Bernie Sanders’ campaign, which took Ash to multiple states this spring, including Iowa and Ohio, as part of the IU Students for Bernie group. They went door-to-door canvassing for Sanders, attended a rally and assisted in his visit to IU’s campus last month.
Ash doesn’t think his lack of political experience will deter him but could actually help him. He said people don’t want a career politician, they want a change.
He knows he doesn’t have the experience of his opponent, but he believes voters want fresh ideas and want to move in a different direction.
“For the most part, I’m a political outsider,” Ash said. “I don’t have family connections to the statehouse, I have not served in formal political office before.”
His biggest challenge so far has been logistics and fundraising. Instead of taking out-of-state contributions, corporate money or union money, Ash made a pledge to only take small individual contributions from small donors.
That’s definitely had an effect on his campaign.
“When you limit yourself to who you’re willing to take money from it really constrains the amount of money you’re able to raise, which in turn prevents you from running the campaign you would like to run,” Ash said.
But ultimately, if the goal is to rid politics of big money, he wants to lead by example.
“We’re not in this race just for the experience,” Ash said. “We’re in this race to win.”
