Longtime Honolulu Advertiser reporter Kevin Dayton is leaving the newspaper to take a job as executive assistant to Big Island Mayor-elect Billy Kenoi.

Dayton, 48, assumes his new duties with the county Monday.

Dayton worked for the Advertiser from 1989 to 1994 before leaving to take a job as a reporter for the Hawaii Tribune-Herald in Hilo for several years. In 1998 he returned to the Advertiser, working as the capitol bureau chief in Honolulu before becoming the Big Island bureau chief in 2002.

He arrived in Hawai'i in 1985 as a soldier assigned to the 25th Infantry Division (Light) at Schofield Barracks. He has also worked for the Associated Press and The Sun Press weekly newspapers on O'ahu, and the Tucson Citizen in Tucson, Ariz.