The author would like to begin by stating that he writes this piece hoping the reader will seriously reconsider any decision they’ve already made in a choice for Philly’s next mayor, and especially to reconsider a decision to not vote if such is the case.

At the New Leader Council Philadelphia’s 2015 Fellows Fundraiser at the WHYY building last Saturday night, mayoral candidate Doug Oliver spoke with me for about 20 minutes about the campaign and his plan for the Executive Office.

“I think there is a drumbeat that has been, I think, established by the media that Tony Williams and Jim Kenney are the frontrunners,” said Oliver, when asked to speak generally about his chances and the race so far. “It has frustrated to no end everyone else.”

Oliver doesn’t put much weight in any of the polls that have been publicized in this race nor the practice of surveying “likely voters” to gain an accurate prediction of the winner.

“The first race I ever paid attention to was the 1999 mayor’s race, and there were poll numbers long before now…they were abundant and they went after more than just likely voters,” Oliver said in our interview, almost monologue, that admittedly had this author entranced for a few hours Saturday night. Doug Oliver is a persuasive man and it is my job not to be easily persuaded.

“You’re saying ‘I’m going to go to the most narrow number of people to include in a poll for the mayor’s race,’” Oliver said. “It’s like I’m gonna go to status quo and ask status quo what they think about status quo what they think about status quo changing. And surprise surprise, status quo is winning.”

Meanwhile, if you ask Lynne Abraham who is in the lead, she’ll tell you that she’s winning by a landslide margin. Her optimism comes despite the overwhelming treatment by the press painting Jim Kenney as the favorite and Tony Williams as the close-rival with the capital to upset.

To get a less-biased view of who might be winning than the one offered by the three candidate-sponsored polls one can look at the recently filed campaign finance reports to see who is trying to put their money where everyone else’s vote is. It should be noted that funds covered here do not include those spent on candidates’ behalfs by “Super PACs,” which have invested close to $10 million in the two front-runners’ campaigns combined.

Senator Anthony Williams’s war-chest remained the fullest, with $1,765,643.54 in total available funds reported in Cycle 2 filings last week.

Kenney’s finance report shows that although he only brought forward about $75,000 from the last cycle, he only trailed Williams in available funds by $450,000 and some change, with $1,307,094 total—almost a million and a quarter raised in this cycle alone and more than 200 percent Williams’ fundraising.

By contrast, Doug Oliver raised about $20,000 this cycle, and spent about $25,000—mostly on basic costs like event space rental and expensive radio and television time.

But Oliver also raised valid points that should give every single Philadelphian pause, and which give an excellent illustration of the power of enthusiastic, unpredictable voter participation. It is the unpredictable, the “X-Factor” as Oliver calls it, that he is relying upon to put him in office.

Fellow candidate Milton Street is another X-Factor for Oliver. He gave as an example Street’s saying he would fire Police Commissioner Ramsey, which Oliver sees as having put pressure on Williams to make a similar declaration in order to distinguish himself from Kenney. This move resulted in public lambasting for the Senator, including Mayor Michael Nutter’s saying that if Williams wouldn’t keep Ramsey then “he probably isn’t smart enough to lead the city.”

But the biggest ace-in-the-hole for Oliver may be the hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians who are registered to vote but whose opinion no one asks and who most predict won’t be out on election day, a tragically self-fulfilling prophecy. Millennials and marginalized groups like minorities don’t typically vote because they are convinced that money buys political offices.

There is Kenney, the former City Councilman who has undergone a marked or at least apparent, evolution. A son of South Philly, who partnered with a former rival in union boss John Dougherty and formed a broad coalition of unlikely political interests. It has taken-on a character that harkens back to the Obama campaign of 2008 in much of its language and even in its specific fundraising mechanisms. While indisputably progressive, perhaps reformed, Kenney is still definitely of the old-guard, and this author is unable to suspend his disbelief that things will somehow turn out differently this time. This is my admitted cynical bent; Mr. Kenney’s ability to navigate diverse constituencies is valuable, and he deserves consideration.

But it is also hard to accept that Kenney was given the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police, and well-funded by the union’s PAC, without some incentive for the notoriously regressive entity. In response to our concerns about this and the overall possibility of influence from local organized labor, a Kenney campaign staffer provided us with the following statement:

“The next mayor will need to bring diverse and sometimes opposing groups together in order to meet the great challenges and opportunities our city is facing. Jim has a record of making hard choices on everything from voting against the DROP to standing up to the Police Commissioner on marijuana decriminalization, and that reputation for making the right choice, not the easy one, has earned him the most diverse coalition of support in recent political memory.”

The constant, parroted objection to Oliver’s victory has been its unlikelihood, which seems like a really poor objection, born of circular reason. Here is an articulate and accomplished man who schedules several hours several days a week, beginning pre-dawn, to look his target audience in the eye and talk them into voting for him. He told me he had personally spoken to 40,000 people. He can also win if people vote for him.

Our endorsement is a vote on the merits.

The Declaration is an alternative news source for Philadelphia, seeking to highlight city politics, art, culture and activism.