Five candidates vie for Sam Farr's congressional seat.

If there's ever been a year in American politics for non-establishment candidates to gain real traction, this is it. 

Riding on the wave of the surprising campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, three people who are neither Democrats nor Republicans are running for Congress, and think they have a better shot than ever before. 

There will be five candidates on the ballot to replace U.S. Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, who is retiring after 23 years in Congress, and more than 40 years as an elected official. 

They are Jimmy Panetta, a prosecutor in the Monterey County District Attorney's office who lives in Carmel Valley; Pacific Grove City Councilwoman and former Naval Postgraduate School professor Casey Lucius, who resigned from her federal government job in order to run; Capitola ironworker Jack Digby; Joe Williams, who works at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz where he's the SEIU union steward; and Barbara Honegger of Carmel Valley, who ran against Sam Farr in 1993 and then went on to work as a writer at the Naval Postgraduate School for 15 years. 

(A sixth would-have-been candidate, Matt Bruner—a 25-year-old Aptos teacher— did not file the proper paperwork to get on the ballot by the deadline of March 16.)

You can expect to see Digby, who has no party preference, and Williams, a member of the Peace and Freedom Party, campaigning together in the coming months as the June 7 primary approaches.

"We plan to stand together and battle the aristocracy in this election," Digby says. "You can’t hand these positions down to your children."

That's a reference to Panetta, a Democrat, whose father, Leon Panetta, held the congressional seat before Farr, then went on to serve as budget director and then chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, then as Secretary of Defense and CIA director under President Barack Obama.

He's the only Dem in the race in a heavily democratic district.

Lucius is the lone Republican, and with nearly one complete term on the P.G. City Council, has the most experience in elected office of all the candidates. 

Like Digby, Honegger has no party preference. "Sam Farr has done a good job, but the American public now knows it’s time for an independent Congress," she says. 

"The problem is that both major political parties have sold out to big money. I won’t and I never will."

(This election, Honegger says she is planning to up her fundraising game. When she crunched the numbers after winning just 1,776 votes in the early '90s, she says she got the most votes per dollar raised. "This time, I will have proper fundraising," she says.)

Panetta leads the way in fundraising, out-fundraising Lucius about 3 to 1 last year. Digby, Williams and Honegger have not yet filed any campaign finance reports. 

Williams also ran against Farr previously, challenging him in 2004. 

He believes his odds of winning are much better this year, partly because it's an open seat with no incumbent. But he also thinks the political landscape is different. 

"The success of Bernie Sanders, out there with the socialist label—that would give my entry into the race some possible staying power," he says of his thought process about whether to run again. 

"I’m aligned with [Sanders] almost 100-percent on domestic policy," Williams adds. 

"We feel the Bern. If he gets elected, he’s going to need allies in Congress."

Williams and Digby, both union members, say Farr has overall done a good job as a congressman, but they think he's going out on a sour note for supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership.