IS THIS AN ELECTION OR A REALITY TV SHOW?

Well, I signed up to help a colleague of mine win a City Council seat in order to get introduced to city politics, and it's been quite an education so far. The mayoral campaign will probably be like the one in 1999: issues-oriented, heated, and close. From what I'm hearing so far, though, the City Council election is less about urban issues and more about smoky-room deals.

Here's how it works: during the primaries in May, registered party voters pick five people from all the candidates in their party. This narrows things down to five D's and five R's. Come November, all voters will pick five candidates from any party, and the top seven (five D's and two R's, in the case of Philadelphia) are in.

So, not unlike Survivor and other reality-based TV shows, contestants -- whoops, excuse me, candidates -- do well to form alliances. For example, on the Republican side, there are two well-known candidates and three dark horses. The front-runners gain nothing if their fan base votes straight Republican; since only two Republicans get in, they need to get more votes than their fellow Republicans. So what they'll usually do is cut a deal with someone on the Democrat side whereby they'll tell their fan base to vote for them, maybe one or two of the dark horse Republican candidates, and then one or two of the Democrats. In return, the Democrat(s) who are getting those votes do the same thing on their side. Kinda sneaky, eh?

I knew I should've paid more attention during Survivor: I could've learned everything I needed to know in order to win a City Council election.