Dawn Addis and Robert Rivas handily win seats representing parts of Monterey County in the California Assembly.

Dawn Addis, a member of Morro Bay City Council, will be Monterey County's newest Assembly member in District 30, a newly drawn district. 

The old version of this district covered Gilroy south, down the entire Salinas Valley. It skirted the Monterey Peninsula but included the Big Sur coast, south to the county line. The redistricting process means that for the next 10 years, it now includes a slice of Santa Cruz County, the Monterey Peninsula and Big Sur; all of coastal San Luis Obispo County plus inland southern SLO County, including the cities of Atascadero and Paso Robles, but none of the Salinas Valley.

Politically, it now leans more heavily Democratic than the previous District 35 that outgoing Assemblymember Jordan Cunningham, R-Templeton, represents. After he beat Addis in 2020 in District 35, Cunningham decided not to seek re-election in the new District 30.

(The new lines also removed all parts of Monterey County from the district of Assemblymember Mark Stone, D-Scotts Valley.)

In this new Democratic-leaning landscape, Addis won in a five-way primary, and went to a runoff election Nov. 8 against Carmel Republican Vicki Nohrden. 

As of 4:20pm on Wednesday, Nov. 9, Addis leads with 60.8 percent of the vote to Nohrden's 39.2 percent. 

Addis is a teacher who has worked for the San Luis Coastal Unified School District since 2001. Her campaign received support from a long list of labor groups, Democratic Party organizations and elected officials. She co-founded the San Luis Obispo Women's March in 2017, a group that has since grown into a standalone nonprofit.

She ran on a platform that includes lowering the cost of housing and reducing homelessness; investing in public education including at the community college, UC and CSU level; defending reproductive rights; and protecting coastal California's natural resources, including striking a balance between a tourism-based economy and delicate natural resources. 

Nohrden has not conceded the election. In an email to supporters on Wednesday afternoon, she continued to request campaign donations.

"This race is not yet over!!" she wrote. "I need your help—we need funds to keep on top of county election reporting! There are so many moving pieces to protecting election integrity and EVERY VOTE COUNTS!"

In District 29, Assemblymember Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, was re-elected with 63.4 percent of the vote over Republican challenger Stephanie L. Castro, based on results reported by the California Secretary of State as of Wednesday afternoon.

It will be Rivas' third term in the Assembly, where he has made a name for himself as a champion of farmworker protections, among other issues.

Rivas has also ascended within the power structure of Sacramento, who had garnered enough support from his Assembly colleagues to be named Speaker of the Assembly until the current speaker, Anthony Rendon, intervened in the process. Typically, a vote on who to name speaker is one of the first orders of business when the new Assembly reconvenes in December, after Election Day.