Three-way Assembly race narrows down to two.

It's become cliche to say politics is a blood sport, and maybe that's because it's proven time and time again, at a local and national level. 

We're barely into 2016, and one of three candidates running for Assembly District 30—which encompasses Salinas and the Salinas Valley, Watsonville in Santa Cruz County, all of San Benito County, and Gilroy and Morgan Hill in Santa Clara County—is dropping out. 

The news will be announced at a press conference at Salinas City Hall Thursday afternoon, and no candidate so far will confirm who it is.

"I cannot confirm or deny," says Peter Leroe-Muñoz, a Gilroy City Councilman and Assembly candidate. 

Leroe-Muñoz is expected to withdraw from the race and endorse Anna Caballero, formerly a two-term assemblywoman for the same district (slightly altered due to redistricting). 

Caballero and Karina Cervantez Alejo, also a candidate for this district, did not immediately return calls for comment Wednesday afternoon. 

Cervantez Alejo is a Watsonville City Council member, and the wife of Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, who has held the District 30 seat for nearly six years. (He can't run again in 2016 due to term limits.)

Cervantez Alejo, Leroe-Muñoz and Caballero have all been vying for Alejo's open seat. 

Caballero was the latest to enter the race, and has not reported fundraising figures yet. But Leroe-Muñoz was trailing far behind Cervantez Alejo as of the July 31 reporting deadline; he had $25,000, compared to her $150,000.

"Our focus is really on running on the strengths of the ideas," Leroe-Muñoz says of the fundraising disadvantage. 

His platform has focused on one key idea: investing heavily in the most troubled school districts. To fund that, he would ramp up enforcement to collect the $25 million annually in delinquent tax payments. 

"If we could get serious about collecting that money and reinvesting it in these more troubled areas, that would go a long way," he says. 

Leroe-Muñoz, a Harvard-educated attorney, first ran for Gilroy City Council in 2010, motivated by his career as a prosecutor in San Benito County. 

"A lot of issues in the DA’s office overlap, especially in younger people," he says. "I wanted to be involved in more of the prevention side of violence." 

As a councilman, he has served on the youth task force, which has upped its fundraising for drug prevention efforts under his leadership.

The same interest motivated him to run for Assembly over the summer. 

"We see low-performing schools almost always in high-crime areas, all over the district," he says. 

He now works as VP of technology and innovation policy at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group in San Jose, representing tech industry members on issues like data privacy and cybersecurity.