Cunningham holds slight edge over Addis in District 35 race

Incumbent Jordan Cunningham is holding onto a slight edge over Morro Bay City Council member Dawn Addis in the race for the District 35 State Assembly seat.

With 75% of precincts reporting, about 6,500 votes separate Cunningham and Addis.

For a complete breakdown of local elections, click here.

The seat serves both Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties, covering from Lompoc to Paso Robles. We featured the race last month, and now Election Day has arrived.

If Cunningham wins, this will be his third term. The republican candidate said that one of his top priorities is to offset the loss of jobs and energy production from the planned closure of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in 2025.

He also said he wants to focus on "highways, infrastructure funding, increasing our water supply, getting offshore wind off the coast of Morro Bay which I've been fighting for, getting Vandenberg Air Force base the commercial space industry."

Democrat candidate Addis said the major California wildfires and resulting unhealthy air quality are especially concerning to her. "We know that there are huge climate impacts that we are feeling right here at home," she said. "Added to that - home costs, lack of jobs, and the Corona crisis."

Both candidates have had ads running frequently on TV through the final weeks of the campaign.

Cunningham said he is proud of his spirited campaign and volunteers, and that he used his campaign in part to point out differences between him and Addis.

Addis said that she has three times the number of individual donors as her opponent and that her team sent out 25,000 hand written postcards. She said she believes Cunningham's campaign statements about her to be inaccurate.

Because of the pandemic, both candidates are having quiet celebrations with family at home and with supporters over Zoom.

The winner will serve for two years before the next election.

Both Cunningham and Addis were invited to complete the NewsChannel 2020 Candidate survey. For a link to their responses, click here.