Mayor Greg Nickels is getting nervous, owing to his low popularity/approval ratings in the polls and the lingering anger over the snowstorm. Meanwhile, green developer Greg Smith is maybe only a week away from deciding whether to challenge Nickels, his erstwhile buddy, in the 2009 race. Smith shows signs of deciding to run: working in vacation trips, studying how he could be Mayor while his company, Urban Visions, continues to own and develop a lot of downtown property.

A telephone poll now under way, presumably for Mayor Nickels, gives an indication of the present anxious state. It asks for views about the Viaduct tunnel plan, the grocery bag tax, and Nickels. In the matchups, Nickels is paired against Peter Steinbrueck, Mark Sidran, Nick Licata, and Ron Reagan Jr. Sidran, who lost narrowly to Nickels in 2001, is thought to be a strong candidate but an unlikely one (King County Executive would be a better electoral match). Reagan, the radio commentator and liberal turncoat from the family's Republicanism, is a startling new idea. Odd that Smith's name wasn't on the list, but maybe the poll sponsors worried about the results of a Greg-Greg match.

My guesses at this point: Licata will run, mostly to espouse the populist/neighborhood causes and to see if lightning strikes. Steinbrueck will enjoy basking in all the mention but prefer his quieter nonpolitical life and not run. Tim Burgess, only two years into being a City Councilmember, will get some late-spring pressure to declare but won't do so if there's a real candidate in the race, such as Smith. Other perennials (Jim Diers, Ginny Anderson, Martha Choe) have already been asked and declined. And there will be someone quite unknown and fresh, trying to translate the Obama script to Seattle. (I'm not being coy: I don't have any names in mind.)