Ben Ambrose

Ben Ambrose grew up on a small farm in Hesperia and left for the Marine Corps six days after finishing high school.¹ He spent nearly two decades as an infantryman, with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and humanitarian work following Haiti's earthquake.² He and his wife now live in Hesperia.²

Ambrose earned an undergraduate degree at Georgetown and an MBA at Johns Hopkins.¹ As a graduate student, he worked in U.S. Senator Ron Wyden's office on veterans' affairs and foreign policy issues.² His later career included government contracting involving the Department of Veterans Affairs and Defense Department.¹

He describes working on a project correcting mismatched records that disrupted veterans' access to healthcare, disability payments or retirement benefits.² He says these errors included shortened names or extra characters introduced when data moved between systems.² He says federal cuts to that work helped prompt his congressional campaign.² Now the Democratic nominee in the 2nd District, he supports capitalism with safeguards against corporate monopolies and describes himself as a supporter of the Second Amendment.²

His priorities include moving toward Medicare for All and expanding vocational education and apprenticeship opportunities.² He supports farmer repair rights and whole farm insurance in federal agricultural legislation.² His campaign backs collective bargaining rights, family leave, fair government contracting and protection for earned retirement benefits.³