Three weeks before the Democratic primary that had been expected to effectively determine which of the five Dems running will be the city's next mayor—while likely winning with the support of well less than 35% of the primary vote—comes a new twist. Three-time candidate Sam Katz—who nearly beat John Street while running as a Republican in 1999, and waged another competitive race in 2003 until an FBI investigation of corruption involving Mayor Street and his inner circle perversely united much of the electorate around the incumbent—has taken steps to set up a belated fourth run, this time as an independent, which makes sense in a city where no member of the GOP has ever been elected mayor, and many voters fear their arms might fall off if they were to pull a Republican lever. And Philly law would allow him to also run on the Republican line, for those Philadelphians without such fears of ideologically-caused amputation.

Still, it's hard to see a three-time losing candidate running in part on the Republican line beating any of these Democrats. But lightning does strike every so often, and it's clear that Katz who as late as Friday was blogging on the race for Philadelphia Magazine, doesn't think much of the field. In his last post, Katz called this "as listless a campaign as any I can remember… So if you’re wondering why this election has seemed as significant as a cup of warm spit, you probably need look no further than the campaigns our candidates are waging. If there were a law against political malpractice, these five would all be breaking it."

I wrote a pair of pieces very sympathetic to Katz during his last run (this one in the Weekly Standard, and this one in the Post), but in some ways the same traits that would have made him an appealing mayor are what have made him a less appealing candidate.

Back in 2003, Katz's team gave me a good number of press releases and research paper pertaining to voter fraud, with some very striking allegations, including one district that consistently produced more votes than it contained voters. That tidbit was somewhere around page 40 of the paper it was in. I can't imagine many reporters waded that far in. I bring this up only because the campaign in some ways seemed to be built—and built well—for governing, with the candidate and his team offering analysis and ideas that were serious and substantial, but frequently none-too-sexy. To riff on Mario Cuomo, it seemed to me that Katz was campaigning in prose.

My sense at the time was that Katz had the stuff to make a very good mayor, but that while hard-working, he was a less than compelling candidate. If he does enter this race, though, it would mean that he'd be running against a candidate most primary voters had opposed, and he'd have nearly six months to redefine himself and his narrative.

Still, there's little downside I can see for the city in a Katz run. At the least, it would make for the more substantial, serious and focused campaign that the city badly needs, and is yet to have.

Drudge has yet another headline today linking to a story on the city's skyrocketing murder rate, which is up to one a day (put another way, more murders than New York City, with one-sixth the population), while the mayor, the Philadelphia Daily News, the New York Times and several of the candidates prefer to blame gun control laws, the economy, demographics, and other factors outside of the city's control. The city needs to come to terms with its problems, and Katz running a reasonably competive general election challenge should help make that happen, and do a fair amount to draw members of the electorate past Democratic primary voters into the conversation.