In a typical election year, the outcome of this Tuesday's Democratic primary race for the five County Commission seats would be a foregone conclusion.

Durham's powerful political action committees would make their recommendations, with at least two of them agreeing on a few candidates. Those frontrunners would likely raise the most money as well, and springtime would see their campaign signs bloom like azaleas in the public right-of-way as they waltzed to their seats.

But this is nothing remotely approaching a typical election year. The N&O has reported that early primary voting in Durham through mid-April already surpassed the 2006 general election levels, and county elections board head Mike Ashe predicts a possible doubling in turnout.

The presence of Barack Obama at the top of the ballot promises to bring in waves of new voters, including many youth and many African-Americans, two groups not typically well represented in Durham's voting pool.

Not that the usual trend hasn't held. Four candidates -- incumbents Becky Heron, Michael Page and Ellen Reckhow, and challenger Don Moffitt -- enjoy endorsements from the Friends of Durham and the People's Alliance.

And Heron, Reckhow, Moffitt, and challenger Josh Parker have collectively raised north of $50,000 for their campaigns, more than seven times all the other challengers combined.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that those who would be frontrunners any other year are coasting to victory. Far from it; they're running harder than ever, thanks to the interesting dynamic of the national electoral politics.

Two weeks before the primary, the buzz around most of the frontrunners' campaigns was focused simply on the one PAC that hadn't endorsed most any of them: the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People.

The Committee has been largely a non-factor in recent races. Its endorsement of Farad Ali over David Harris in a close City Council race this past fall likely helped Ali to his close win. But without a strong base of support from other PACs and civic groups, Ali would have likely ended up like fellow Committee endorsee Victoria Peterson: a distant also-ran.

This time around, though, the unusual tenor of the national race brings a singular focus to whether the Committee can somehow muster the resources for a get-out-the-vote push targeting black voters and boosting its slate of County Commission candidates: Page, Fred Foster Jr., and Joe Bowser.

It's the big question for this primary election: Can the Committee overcome an aging membership base and strained finances to pull off a big upset?

There are 30 percent more black Democrats than white Democrats registered in the county, but the registration numbers nearly balance if you add unaffiliated voters (who can choose to participate in the primary). Turnout is expected to be disproportionately high, though, in the black community.

Still, will newly registered and long-inactive voters care about the Committee's endorsement, if they're only recently engaged with local politics?

And will those new Obama-Clinton voters show an interest in the local races, or skip voting for candidates about whom they have little knowledge?

In that vein, for all the fretting coming from the traditional frontrunners, it seems the Committee has a great deal at stake in the answer to these two questions.

After all, a strong, organized Committee should have little problem getting its three-person slate elected. While Page's three endorsements make him a lock for re-election, failing to put Bowser or Foster on the Commission would be another sign that the Committee's influence is dwindling.

My prediction: New voters will focus mostly on the top of the ticket, and Bowser's controversial previous term on the County Commission will cost him votes. My money's on Page, Reckhow, Moffitt, and Heron, in that order, with a much tighter race among Foster, Brenda Howerton and Parker for the final seat.

In the end, though, we won't really know until the numbers come in Tuesday night. Come on downtown and watch the results as they happen. And be sure to bring a towel to help wipe the sweat from the frontrunners' brows.