Your Lost Coast Outpost has been thrilled at the prospect of hot Dem-on-Dem action after June 5. Thanks to voters, California is testing out a whole new system of elections this year. The old primary election/general election is a thing of the past – instead, every candidate for state and federal office runs on the same ballot in the primary, regardless of party, and the top two candidates go on to compete in the general election in November.

For North Coast voters, this reform couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. Last year, redistricting took our longstanding and seemingly undefeatable Congressional representative – Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) – away from us, marooning the suave lawmaker in a newly drawn district that includes Santa Rosa and Martinez. At the same time, the Citizens Redistricting Commission handed us off to ultralefty Marin County, whence a whole passel of Democratic aspirants seek to rise to the throne. In other words, we on the North Coast get to now experience our very first legislative election in almost two decades – our first real election, anyway.

Problem being that despite the state’s new election system, the thing has been scripted almost to a fault. Two candidates advance past June to the general election. There’s been a whole bunch of jostling, but any reasonable assessment has to place Assm. Jared Huffman – establishment Dem candidate – at the front of the pack. Who is lucky number two? Well, the problem is that the non-Huffman Democratic vote is split at least three ways, and so in all likelihood you had to assume that despite the overwhelming liberalness of the electorate the rump conservatives would all pull the lever for Dan Roberts, token Republican. So it would be Huffman/Roberts come November, with Huffman effortlessly crushing the mild-mannered financier to a bloody pulp in the fall.

Hold up, though! Today’s Santa Rosa Pee-Dee tells us that another Republican has entered the race! This is Michael Halliwell, a Cotati-based ex-professor, and it turns out that this is his third race for Congress on behalf of the (locally) doomed Republican party. With two Rs to choose from at the ballot box, might it be that the June Republican vote is spread out among Halliwell and Roberts, giving a second Democrat a chance to slip through and make a race of things in the general election?

Perhaps. We’re rooting for Mr. Halliwell, but his record doesn’t inspire that much confidence.

He has stood for Congress twice in recent years, both time seeking the seat held by Marin Democrat Lynn Woolsey. In 2008 he did kinda OK, garnering a not-too-thrilling 24.1 percent of the Sixth District vote on behalf of the Republican party.

In 2010, though, he faced a Republican rival – Jim Judd, a Rohnert Park-based captain of industry. When the primary rolled around, Halliwell fared little better in an all-Republican primary than he did against Woolsey two years earlier; Judd spanked the man who is now our last, best hope by better than two-to-one, giving the victor a few months of glory before his own inevitable slaughter in the general.

So perhaps Halliwell’s R-appeal cannot be banked upon. Still, for those who pine for a Huffman-Solomon contest, or a Huffman-Adams, or a Huffman-Lawson, his late entry is a reason to hope.