We're about to enter one of the kookiest election years in California's 175-year history, with a bevy of Congressional seats up for grabs, and a wide open governor's race that already has too many Democrats in it.

It's looking like the coming winter and spring will bring plenty of drama and infighting among California Democrats, who in a normal year would likely be duking it out for two primary slots in the governor's race — with the state doing open primaries since 2011 in which the top two vote getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election.

The open primary will also apply in the state's 52 congressional districts, many of which are being redrawn in Democrats' favor thanks to Prop 50.

As CalMatters discusses this week, all this madness is going to create "one of the oddest election cycles in California’s 175 years as a state, albeit one that puts the state’s convoluted politics in the national spotlight."

Assuming they all stay in the race — and the California Democratic Party would be wise to try to push some of them out before it's too late — we're looking at over a dozen or more Democrats running for governor against a handful of Republicans, and this could play in Republicans' favor, with the Dems doing a lot of vote-splitting.

The two most prominent Republicans in the race as of now, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former TV commentator Steve Hilton, could conceivably be the two biggest vote getters in an open primary with just 10% or 15% of the vote apiece, as CalMatters notes. For that to happen, Democrats like Katie Porter, Rep. Eric Swalwell, billionaire Tom Steyer, former LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and former Attorney General and Biden cabinet member Xavier Becerra would each have to be polling under 10% going into June, with lesser known candidates siphoning off some of the Democratic vote.

It's an unlikely scenario, but scary that we're even discussing it seven months out. And it's happening in part because a more major figure like Kamala Harris is not in the running.

California political soothsayer Willie Brown gave a recent prescient comment to Politico, saying, "The field is not considered of a quality that you as a Democrat would expect in California."

Brown added, "We’re still pretty much carried away with stardom, with individuals who have some impact … We don’t have any candidates like that at the moment."

So, California Democrats need someone, or several someones, to play some kind of consigliere role and keep this from getting messy. As Politico writes, "the prospect of a humiliating pile-up, with no clear powerbroker to act as traffic cop, has put the state’s political class increasingly on edge with each new entrant into the field."

Porter may still maintain an advantage by being the only significant female candidate in the race — and she's recently been joking saying "It’s raining men" with regard to many male entrants to the governor's race, and the rumors of several more. But who knows what will matter most when all is said and done — or if that weird viral gaffe in which she almost walked out of an October interview with a reporter has actually done her some damage.

There was also, in October, another video from 2021 that surfaced in October showing Porter berating a staffer, yelling, "Get out of my fucking shot!" during a Zoom-style webinar she was recording for the Biden administration.

The latest pulse-check poll of voters, which the Sacramento Bee just reported on today, finds Hilton and Bianco, the two Republicans, currently leading with 18% and 14% of voters respectively, and new entrant Swalwell in third place with 12%. Porter trails in this poll at 9%, and Becerra has a dismal 1%.

Related: Rep. Eric Swalwell Officially Launches Campaign for California Governor

Photo by hayleigh b