California Democrat Kevin de León

Now this is interesting. Democratic pollster Sextant Strategies, on behalf of the newspaper Capitol Weekly, has conducted the first public survey of California's Senate race since state Senate President Kevin de León announced a challenge to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a fellow Democrat. In a three-way matchup that also features wealthy Republican businessman John Cox, Feinstein takes 40, while Cox gets 32 and de León 14.

But despite the seemingly large gap, these numbers are good news for de León. For starters, Feinstein, despite her long service and universal name recognition, is only at 40 percent; in 2012, she took 49 percent in the top-two primary. Second, Cox isn't actually running for the Senate—he's running for governor—and Sextant acknowledges that they're merely using him as a stand-in. Now, Cox is a freakshow who's run for office many times before in Illinois (and once for president), but he does have money, and he did actually seed his gubernatorial campaign with $1 million. That's more than the GOP's 2012 Senate candidate, Elizabeth Emken, raised all cycle, so that puts Cox a cut above whoever runs for the Republicans this time—and so far, they've got literally no one.

But that brings us to our third and perhaps most important point: Despite having been pushed to the brink of extinction, California Republicans are unlikely to coalesce around just one semi-credible candidate. Indeed, in last year's Senate race, several very weak candidates split the primary vote so badly that two Democrats advanced to the general election, and in 2012, Emken only took 13 percent amidst another fractured field. (She was "lucky" enough to move on to November's slaughter because no other serious Democrats challenged Feinstein.)

This all means the very hypothetical 32 percent going to "Cox" right now is likely the GOP's high-water mark. It would only take three or maybe even just two Republicans of similarly weak caliber to foment another split that would allow de León to grab the second slot. Of course, from there he'd face the monumentally difficult task of beating Feinstein in a general election, but even in a two-way matchup, the incumbent only leads 36-17, with 28 percent (many of whom might be Republicans) saying they'd vote for neither candidate and 19 percent undecided.

However, just as de León would benefit greatly from a multi-candidate GOP field, he can't afford to let any other Democratic challengers gain traction. And unfortunately for de León, that's largely out of his hands. Wealthy financial entrepreneur Joseph Sanberg recently told the San Francisco Chronicle's Joe Garofoli that he was still considering a bid of his own, in an interview that took place after de León launched his own campaign. And political commentator Cenk Uygur, who hosts the news show "Young Turks," is reportedly looking at the race, too. That's more than a little odd, though, because CNN recently reported that Uygur's co-host, Ana Kasparian, is also thinking about running, so who knows? In addition, billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer has publicly said he could join, too.

But this is definitely a case where more would not be the merrier, at least on the Democratic side. De León (and progressives supporting him) need other Democrats to stay out, and they need Republicans to jump in. Whether things will in fact unfold this way is anyone's guess, but if they do, at least Sextant's poll suggests de León could have a real shot at setting up a face-to-face matchup with Feinstein in November of next year.