Samantha Mota

Samantha Mota is a Democratic candidate who placed second in the June 2026 top-two primary and faces fellow Democrat Sydney Kamlager-Dove in the general election. A Los Angeles County native and former Santa Monica commissioner, she describes her campaign as grassroots and community-focused. She has named immigration reform, universal health care, family leave and economic stability as policy priorities.[1][2][3]

Samantha Mota says she was born and raised in Los Angeles County in a rent-controlled unit, and that her single-parent family relied on WIC, SNAP, Medicaid and other programs.[3] She attended Santa Monica College for political science, then joined Climate Action Santa Monica and began guerrilla gardening in a vacant lot, which she describes as the start of her activism.[3] In October 2021, according to her campaign website, the City of Santa Monica's Hispanic Heritage Month Committee gave her its Premio de Orgullo Award for expanding urban agriculture.[3]

Mota was appointed in January 2021 to Santa Monica's Public Safety Reform and Oversight Commission, and she was a candidate for Santa Monica City Council in August 2022.[3] She says she later moved to Baldwin Hills, where she lives with her husband.[3] In her 2025 Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey, Mota describes her campaign as grassroots, community focused and transparent, and says she is running because of a lack of new and transparent leadership in politics.[1]

She placed second in the June 2, 2026 nonpartisan primary with 11.7% of the vote (15,019 votes), advancing to a same-party general election against incumbent Sydney Kamlager-Dove.[2]

Researched from the cited sources on 2026-10-21.