The mayor's race: Cannibalism, then Katz?

OK, KIDS, TRY to stay calm. A mere 13 weeks from tomorrow, you get to pick a new mayor.

Well at least you get to pick mayoral nominees from the two major parties.

Don't laugh, there are two major parties.

Wait, what am I thinking? Go ahead and laugh.

Then, depending on who wins and how much damage he or she sustains in doing so, you might get the option of voting for Sam Katz - again.

Confused?

Come on, it's Philadelphia.

The primary is May 19. Mayor Nutter can't run again. So a gaggle of Democrats is lined up but drawing, to be kind, less than electric reaction.

It's a race in search of enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, a few Republicans - including one with a name made for modern politics, Elmer Money - get together tomorrow with city GOP chief John Taylor, who says there'll be a Republican candidate, which is an exercise in optimism.

Philly last elected a Republican mayor in 1947. Current registration stats show Democrats with a better than 6-to-1 edge. And the city has nearly as many registered Libertarians and "others" as Republicans.

"We're trying, that's all I can tell you," Taylor tells me.

So let's agree that it's a Democratic race. And don't feel bad if you haven't noticed. Nobody has. None of the candidates is exciting. None has money to go on TV to appear exciting.

It's "a car stuck in neutral," says one insider, largely because of the will-he/won't-he act of Council President Darrell Clarke, who held things up before opting out last month.

Then there's money. Or lack of it.

Campaign-finance limits aimed at ending pay-to-play are expected to keep candidate stockpiles low, likely well-below the estimated $2 million-plus cost for anyone to wage a full-fledged TV effort.

That means that independent PACs put together by single-issue groups, business interests and unions with no spending limits (and, by law, no coordination with campaigns) will have more influence than individual candidates on what's aired.

Speaking of candidates, they are: former District Attorney Lynne Abraham, former Common Pleas Judge Nelson Diaz, former City Councilman Jim Kenney, former PGW spokesman Doug Oliver, maybe former (as in 30 years ago) state Sen. T. Milton Street, state Sen. Anthony Williams and the Rev. Keith Goodman of North Philadelphia Seventh-day Adventist Church (he announced yesterday).

The front-runner, if you buy her internal polling, is Abraham (surely based solely on name ID).

Or, if you buy conventional wisdom, it's Williams (based on demographic "truths" of the city: two whites, a Latino and a credible African-American means the African-American wins).

But I'd note a couple of things.

At this point in 2007, in the last open-seat mayor's race, the front-runner was Chaka Fattah and he ended up finishing fourth with 15 percent of the vote.

And it remains to be seen exactly how credible Williams (or anybody else) can be.

The only surety is a dash for dollars followed by candidate cannibalism.

This gets us to Sam Katz's apparent plan to watch the carnage, come in after and offer an alternative.

Katz, you may know, lost three times for mayor and once for governor as a GOP candidate, but last week registered independent or, as he says, "nonpartisan."

Katz isn't saying he's in. "I'm not a windmill-tilter," he says. He's saying he might get in.

First he wants to float ideas to do some things differently in the city that he says people will either find "nuts" or get enthusiastic about.

Then after the primary, he'll look at the possibility of running in the fall.

He even invokes Rudolph Blankenburg, a German-born businessman, the last independent elected Philly mayor. It was 1911. He was a reformer. His nickname was "The Dutch Cleanser."

So, what's not to like? An open, anything-can-happen primary with unions and other special interests having the loudest voices, followed by the possibility of another Katz campaign - and maybe even a nickname.

It's going to be hard to stay calm.

Blog: ph.ly/BaerGrowls

Columns: ph.ly/JohnBaer