Knox says he'll challenge Nutter if Katz doesn't

If Sam Katz decides against taking the plunge to challenge Mayor Nutter next year, another former mayoral candidate - Tom Knox - says he will.

"Somebody needs to put the city back straight, and Michael Nutter is not doing it," said Knox, the self-made millionaire who spent nearly $12 million of his own money to come in second in the 2007 five-way Democratic mayoral primary. Nutter, who spent less than half that amount, won with 37 percent of the vote to Knox's 25 percent.

Knox said he would not run if Katz did. But he has turned to the same person to help size up his prospects: former Mayor John F. Street, a chief Nutter foe.

"I wanted to know whether he was going to run - he said he has been there and done that and he doesn't want to do that again," Knox said of Street's own desire to be a candidate in next spring's Democratic primary.

Asked whether the former mayor might support him, Knox said Street had told him it was "a distinct possibility. . . . He said Sam had not made up his mind."

Street, who did not reply to an e-mail for this story, criticized Nutter on several fronts during a lunch with Knox on Thursday at Sabrina's Cafe on Callowhill Street, the same place he frequently has eaten with Katz.

"He was rattling them off like a machine gun," Knox recalled, mentioning Nutter's failure so far to negotiate new contracts with two municipal unions and the bigger mayoral staff employed by Nutter compared with Street's.

In January, Knox withdrew from the Pennsylvania governor's race because he said his wife, Linda, objected to how the Harrisburg job would require nightly absences from the Philadelphia home they share.

That would not be an issue if he were mayor, he said.

Katz, who has run for mayor three times, has not commented publicly about his intentions. He has met in recent weeks with, among others, three dozen African American city leaders to see if they might back him.

Katz has told people he would make a decision before Jan. 1 so he could take advantage of campaign-finance rules to maximize the amount of money he can raise in a calendar year.

Knox faces no similar time pressure since he said he again would be willing to spend his own money.

"People were betting against Knox putting in $12 million when he was talking about it four years ago, so I'd never bet against him not putting his money in," political consultant Ken Smukler said.

But he said Katz and Knox, who are both white, would face an uphill battle to unseat Nutter, who is black, unless another African American candidate ran, possibly drawing votes away from the mayor.

However, Smukler said that since he expected Nutter would still get the backing of voters in racially mixed neighborhoods such as Center City, Mount Airy, and Chestnut Hill, Katz or Knox would need to cut into the African American vote to win, and that would be difficult.

In both 1999 and 2003, Katz got just 2 percent of the black vote.

"I'm not surprised by anything that some people in politics do," Nutter said. "The election will come and we'll see what happens."