There may someday be a Duncan Hunter political dynasty in east San Diego County, but there won’t be a coronation.

Hunter, R-Alpine, is making a long-shot bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination after representing East County in Congress for 28 years.

While Hunter’s presidential bid has shown few signs of life, he is seeking to will his 52nd District House seat to his son, Duncan D. Hunter, who is currently serving in Afghanistan on his third tour of duty with the Marines.

The younger Hunter may have the best-known name, but he won’t inherit the seat without a fight because three potentially strong Republican candidates – Santee Councilman Brian Jones, businessman Ken King and businessman Bob Watkins – have emerged to challenge him in the June 3 primary election.

Because the Legislature split off the presidential primaries into a separate election Feb. 5 and because there appear to be no controversial initiatives headed for the June ballot, the voter turnout is expected to be an all-time low for a state primary election.

That could mitigate Hunter’s name familiarity advantage because it portends an electorate that, while small, will be well-informed and less likely to vote for Hunter out of force of habit or confusion with his father.

“It’s not going to be one of those cases where they go out to vote for president and then they see the name Duncan Hunter and punch it,” said Allan Hoffenblum, publisher of the California Target Book, which analyzes state political campaigns. “It’s such a different electorate.”

All four Republicans in the 52nd District race have different built-in advantages.

Hunter can tap into the political network his father has built up over the decades.

Jones, who has close ties to many of the district’s religious conservatives, is the only candidate to have ever held elective office in the district.

King, owner of San Diego Pools, brings personal wealth to the race.

Watkins, who heads an international executive recruiting firm and has served on a number of San Diego-area boards of directors, is plugged in to Republican financial circles. He has served as chairman of the San Diego County Lincoln Club, a party fundraising organization.

Hunter is scheduled to return from Afghanistan in early December. He has been represented at campaign fundraising events most of the year by his wife, Margaret.

Plans for him to campaign over the Internet while deployed were thwarted by Pentagon procedures.

“I had grand plans for him blogging constantly on the campaign and videoconferencing,” said Hunter campaign manager Dave Gilliard. “The military rules wouldn’t allow any of that.”

The 52nd District is a reliable Republican stronghold where Republicans outnumber Democrats 46 percent to 30 percent.

Even so, local Democrats believe they have a credible candidate in the 52nd District as well as in Republican Brian Bilbray’s 50th District in North County. If 2008 turns out to be as big a Democratic year as many expect, Democrats say upsets are not out of the question.

Former Navy SEAL Mike Lumpkin is running for the Democratic nomination in the 52nd District. Another potential candidate, Jim Hester, is making the rounds of local Democratic clubs.

In the 50th District, Democrat Francine Busby got 45 percent of the vote against Bilbray’s 50 percent in the 2006 special election in the aftermath of the Randy “Duke” Cunningham scandal.

This year, attorney Nick Leibham is carrying the Democratic banner against Bilbray.

“If there is a wave that moves across the country similar to what we saw in 2006, but perhaps even larger for the Democrats, along with presidential coattails, the stars may align,” said Jess Durfee, chairman of the San Diego County Democratic Party.

But the stars may have aligned last year as much as they are ever going to for Democrats in the 50th District, said Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California San Diego. Of the district’s registered voters, 30 percent are Democrats and 44 percent are Republican.

Jacobson contends there are no conventional political dynamics, even a top-of-the-ticket landslide, that would move such heavily Republican districts as the 50th and the 52nd into the Democratic column.

“These are just really solidly Republican districts,” he said. “The registration gap is just too big for a Democrat to overcome. You can imagine a great personal scandal creating an upset, but nothing political.”

Only one of California’s 53 congressional districts has changed parties since the bipartisan gerrymander of 2001, and San Diego’s five House districts are all safely in the hands of one party or the other.

Democrat Susan Davis of San Diego has drawn one Republican opponent in the 53rd District, Delecia Ann Holt. No one has yet filed statements of intention to run against Democrat Bob Filner of Chula Vista in the 51th or Republican Darrell Issa of Vista in the 49th.