For the final five candidates, it's time to race

With about 100 days left until the mayoral primary, there are only two things most experts can agree on.

First, the winner of this contest will most likely be the next mayor of Philadelphia.

And second, whoever wins on May 15 is anybody's guess.

Last week, with U.S. Rep. Bob Brady (D-Pa.) entering the race and union leader John Dougherty announcing he will not be in the running, the campaign is set to take a dramatic turn as the five Democratic opponents duke it out over the airwaves and in print.

Though early polls suggest that U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.), who represents Penn's district in Congress, has taken an early lead against his rivals, "the field at this point is still reasonably wide open," said Neil Oxman, a veteran political consultant who worked in six of the last seven Philadelphia mayoral elections.

Kevin Feeley, a former adviser to Gov. Ed Rendell, agreed.

"This is going to be a shootout," he said.

With each candidate having their own strengths and weaknesses, the question that remains is who among the candidates will appeal most to voters tired of rising homicide and violent crime rates, which together are shaping up to be the No. 1 issue in the campaign.

To that end, many of the candidates have already devoted plenty of time pushing their policy proposals and burnishing their crime-fighting credentials.

Former Councilman Michael Nutter is also pushing himself as the reformer of the group, drawing on his work amending the city Charter to empower an independent ethics board to combat corruption.

Tim Spreitzer, spokesman for state Rep. Dwight Evans (D-Phila.), was also quick to point out that his candidate's long tenure on the Legislature's powerful appropriations committee hasn't been marred by a single scandal.

However, both Nutter and Evans suffer by having only a small political base drawn from their own districts to work with as a natural pool of supporters.

Fattah, on the other hand, may be seen as too close to current mayor John Street, though he is the most charismatic of the group, Oxman said.

Meanwhile, Brady has promised to apply the pragmatic approach he uses as chairman of the city's Democratic Party, a position he has held for 20 years and one that has given him innumerable connections among ward leaders and other local political figures.

As Randall Miller, a political analyst at St. Joseph's University, said Brady "has so many chips in his desk that he can call in."

But that may not be enough for him, said Oxman, who pointed out that mayoral elections - unlike those of lesser-known public officials - aren't totally under the control of local party bosses because people take the time to make up their own minds about candidates.

The big unknown of the race is businessman Tom Knox, who is portraying himself as the ultimate outsider in a city seen as having a corrupt political culture.

"His campaign is his checkbook," said Oxman of the self-made millionaire.

Knox has already been spending a large chunk of his personal fortune on television advertisements that debuted several weeks ago and has remained the only candidate to pay for time on the airwaves thus far.

Oxman expects Knox to sink upwards of $10 million on the election, far more than any candidate has in the bank. Whether that will be enough to give him the name recognition he needs to win in May is anyone's guess.

The other question remaining is if any of the candidates will choose to drop out as the race unfolds and a clear favorite emerges.

Both Oxman and Feeley tend to discount that possibility, citing the enormous amounts of capital - both political and monetary - that all five candidates have already sunk into the race.

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