Michelle Hufcut has dropped out of the three-way race for the Democratic registrar of voters. I am bummed. I was planning on voting for her in the primary on August 14. Now it will be between Patty Horvath, the mayor’s pick for the position, and Deb Evangelista, who has been a major Picard supporter and expected his nod for the post.

Michelle has done a great job as the Democratic registrar, and received plenty of support and signatures to run, so I was a bit surprised to learn she had bowed out of the race. When I spoke to her yesterday, she told me she regrets having to drop out due to health issues. “It takes a lot of time and energy to run a successful campaign and I can’t do that and take care of myself the way I need to at the moment,” said Michelle. “Of course I am disappointed, but my doctor told me it would be very foolish not to address these health issues, and that the stress of the campaign would not help. I would like to thank everyone that urged me to run again and who supported me over the past several weeks. I really do appreciate it.”

So who to support in the primary on August 14? Beats me. Deb is running because she is angry that Picard picked Patty for the job and not her, after her years of supporting him. Quite the slap in the face. It will be interesting moving forward to see if this will have a splinter effect on Picard’s supporters.

Of course, I’m sure there will be low voter turnout. Even lower than usual is my guess. Most residents don’t even know about the primary – and it’s in August when many are away on vacation. I’d like to run a contest just for fun. Take a guess on how many will vote and send it in here as a comment. I ‘ll buy the lucky person who is closest to the actual number, but not over, lunch at Oyster River Tavern.