Even more of a red flag in my opinion. If it were a viable seat then they wouldn't be so desperate to field a candidate. The big money interests on your side would already have their bought and paid for candidate in place. Not only that, expect nasty.
I'm not trying to rain on your parade or anything....but I've just BTDT too many times. My DH is currently in the same position. He's running his 5th race, 4 have been in primaries in his own party ® and this time as the lone candidate from his party against the other. The funny thing; everyone on our side has said he's running against the most conservative member of the council.
Things I've seen:
State Senate (not my district): The incumbent R was about to be busted for a career ending infraction so he had a primary challenger. It didn't come out until after the filing period was over. Since the people running the party on the R side didn't like the primary challenger, the Ds and Rs got together to vote for the well known about to resign incumbent so both sides could have a do over in a special election.
State House (not my district): The incumbent bought robocalls that had recordings of made up endorsements for his opponent and ran them at 1 - 3 am.
County Party Chair: Two incumbents are mad at the party leadership, one because all but three of the precinct chairs endorsed his opponent last time. They have put up a challenger for the county chair seat so now we have an intra-party war and they haven't been subtle about the whole point being to put their people in power.
I've also seen them monkeying the numbers on the electronic ballot boxes.
The bottom line.....when it comes down to it, VERY few voters care about talking points and issues. Even the ones who say they do don't actually vote where their mouth is. I've seen it in 4 elections now. Don't be naive and think elections are about issues, they aren't. They are about name id only. And it takes *a lot* of money to get your name out (don't count on donations either). They need to see your name 7 - 8 times to get it to stick enough to make a vote. If you talk to someone at the door, make sure you try to get them to commit to voting for you.
Voter rolls are public information. The counties in your office's district should have a way for you to get a list of who voted in which elections. Get that list so you at least know who votes and how. Primary voters are more dedicated voters and should be the higher priority for door knocking and mailers. Warning, its a lot of names to process so get started now. Sometimes the party will have a voter database that you can access to help create walking lists. It's usefulness depends upon how well your state party manages it.
Good luck.
Stefanie