Though we don’t yet know who won the Democratic gubernatorial primary, whoever it is will face a messy, difficult general campaign.

The one sure thing is that all four of the party’s remaining contenders — Angus King III is no longer in the running — have a good shot at winning in November and governing well for the next four years.

On the other hand, Maine Republicans, from a wide array of candidates, managed to pick the worst of their primary field as their nominee to lead the state.

Bobby Charles, a Leeds attorney, ran a racist campaign that featured regular slurs against the state’s Somali community and Maine’s major cities. For sensible Mainers, he offers precious little in the line of policy and good governance.

A showdown between Charles and any of the Democrats still in the running in Maine would, I’m sure, lead to a big victory for Democrats angling to keep the Blaine House in their party’s hands.

As with so many things these days, however, it won’t be that simple.

There’s a third candidate who has a strong chance of emerging on top: state Sen. Rick Bennett, a longtime Republican who quit his party to become unaffiliated. He knew he couldn’t win over the MAGA crowd so it was the only way Bennett could get on the ballot.

If Maine had ranked-choice voting in the governor’s race, a three-way race would be just fine.

Unlike in the primaries, however, the candidate who gets the most votes on Nov. 3 will be our next governor. Recent political history shows us that can open the door to an unsettling prospect.

In both 2010 and 2014, Republican candidate Paul LePage won gubernatorial races because a widely admired third-party contender swallowed so many votes from independent-minded Mainers that Democrats lost out.

That contender? Eliot Cutler, who pleaded guilty to child pornography charges in 2023 and keeps flagrantly violating probation terms, almost won in 2010 and secured enough support in 2014 to leave LePage in charge for a second term.

When Cutler torpedoed two Democratic campaigns for governor — Libby Mitchell’s in 2010 and Mike Michaud’s in 2014 — he did Maine no favors. That Cutler has emerged to be such a hopeless criminal makes it all much worse.

This time around, Bennett has the possibility of playing the same political role as Cutler did. Although I feel a sense of dismay as I eye this risk, I can’t blame the Oxford politician for taking a shot.

As former Auburn state Sen. Eric Brakey of Auburn observed last week, with Charles as the Republican nominee, Bennett has “a strong path to the Blaine House,” an assessment shared by the city’s current state senator, Republican Bruce Bickford.

I don’t feel especially alarmed at the idea of Gov. Rick Bennett.

Bennett has been a friend to the Somali community, even speaking at a December rally held in Lewiston to support immigrants, and has remained largely true to his old-fashioned Republican roots. A former state GOP chair, Bennett would fit right in with the party as it was when Sens. Margaret Chase Smith, Bill Cohen and Olympia Snowe held sway in the GOP.

Now, it’s a party of cranks and chaos agents, where Charles’ ugly campaign doesn’t seem a bit out of place.

Let’s just hope that Bennett, who has earned a chance to compete, doesn’t wind up helping the extreme wing of his former party take power in Maine.