County Supervisor Luis Alejo bows out of State Senate race.

It’s been hard to miss Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo the past year. He shows up seemingly everywhere at community events, wearing a signature white straw hat.

That hat seemed poised to be thrown into the ring for the State Senate District 12 seat until Monday, when Alejo announced he was not running.

Current State Sen. Anthony Cannella, R-Ceres, terms out after eight years in office, meaning it's the first time since 2010 the seat is open.

Alejo, a Democrat, had been exploring the race for many months. He had a fundraising committee for the State Senate seat even before he ran for county supervisor, fand had more than $82,000 by June 30, 2017. (The latest fundraising totals for the second half of 2017 will not be available until February.)

Assemblymember Anna Caballero, D-Salinas, ended the same fundraising period with $127,603 in her campaign chest.

Alejo announced in a press release and on Facebook on Jan. 22 he will not run for the seat after all.

He downplays the fundraising difference as the reason why he decided to pass on running for the seat, which represents Salinas and all four South County cities, as well as a portion of the Central Valley, home to two-thirds of the district’s voters.

“This is really where my heart is,” he says of his current job representing Monterey County’s District 1. “In the last 12 months I’ve really grown into the job.”

He cites wanting to continue working on a number of initiatives from his first year as supervisor, including creating a permanent homeless shelter, the Salinas Valley Groundwater Sustainability Agency, the Interlake Tunnel Project, the Salinas Regional Soccer Complex, among others.

Alejo recently took over as chair of the five-member Board of Supervisors, where he notes he only has to swing two additional votes to pass ordinances, as opposed to needing 41 votes when he represented District 30 in the 80-member State Assembly in Sacramento from 2012 to 2016.

Which leads Alejo to another point: Remaining in his job with the Board of Supervisors keeps him home in Monterey County where he can spend more time with constituents and have a little personal time on the side, instead of spending four days a week in Sacramento working 16-hour days and weekends attending multiple events.

“I’ve been to Sacramento before, I’ve been there and done that,” he says.

But he doesn't rule out anything going forward and says, “There’s always more opportunities in the future.”

(Alejo also currently maintains a committee to run for supervisor again in 2020. That campaign chest ended the June 2017 period with nearly $40,000 in contributions.)

With Alejo gone from the District 12 race, that leaves Caballero—who ran for the seat in 2010 and lost—and possible Democratic challengers from the Central Valley in Dennis Brazil, the former mayor of Gustine; Daniel Parra, currently mayor pro-tem of Fowler; and Necola Adams, a baker who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Merced in 2016.

Republican candidates (and potential candidates) include Derek Robinson, a Madera City Council member; Monterey County Republican strategist Andrew Russo; farmer Johnny Tacherra from Fresno; and Robert Poythress, a Madera County supervisor.

Those potential candidates must file between Feb. 12 and March 9 to run in the June 5 primary. The top two vote-getters will then go to a runoff in November, regardless of party affiliation due to California's open primary system.

Any Democratic candidate will have a tough race: Despite being made up of 46 percent Democratic registered voters, the District 12 seat has gone to Republicans for the past two terms, and Caballero ran and lost to Cannella in 2010. In 2014, Cannella, then an incumbent, won the primary handily with 63 percent of the vote.

The website aroundthecapitol.com notes the district "leans Republican."