Mayor Nutter Polls On Mayor's Race Vs. Bill Green

Mayor Nutter's polling firm, Peter D. Hart Research Associates, is in the field this week testing the opinions of his administration compared to a potential 2011 Democratic primary election rival, City Councilman Bill Green.

Mike Shapiro, a Philadelphia attorney who worked on the 2008 Obama for President campaign in Pittsburgh, said he received one of the polling calls yesterday evening.  Shapiro said the poll was mostly focused on Nutter and Green but also asked for opinions about potential campaigns for mayor by two 2007 candidates, U.S. Rep. Bob Brady and millionaire Tom Knox, along with three-time candidate Sam Katz, state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams and City Controller Alan Butkovitz.

Green, a persistent Nutter critic who had been saying for months that he would not run for mayor, told us three weeks ago that he was reconsidering that position after Katz ruled out a fourth run for mayor.  That would explain his prominent placement in the new Nutter poll.

Shapiro told us the poll asked several questions about potential political attacks on Nutter: Whether he was seen as weak and ineffectual, whether he was cozied up to the good-old-boys rather than the reformers, whether he was failing to help the financial health of the city.  The poll also asked about City Council and the job Green is doing there.  Shapiro, who doesn't plan to support Nutter, said he has not decided on a different candidate.

"I love this city," Shapiro said. "I voted for Mayor Nutter and I would not again. I think that he just wasn't what he put himself out to be. He put himself out as a reformer and he is not that effective at all."