Photo by yonas1

It was just last week that we highlighted the somewhat pathetic state of the District’s mayoral contest — after all, it’s not really much of a competition when the incumbent has a war chest valued at $3.3 million and his two challengers can’t even scrape together $3,000.

But suddenly this week we’ve seen a flurry of, well, rumors. On Monday, word on the street was that D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray again might be about to announce — just maybe, who knows, we’ll see — that he’s throwing his hat in the ring. And just yesterday, City Desk reported some key staffing moves that might indicate mega-developer Don Peebles is ready to declare that he too — just maybe, who knows, we’ll see — will be in the running against Fenty. Today, the Washington Post caps it off, reporting that both men are rallying their bases and prepping — just maybe, who knows, we’ll see — to vie for the city’s top elected office.

OK, fine, we’ll go along with this, just for the sake of entertainment. It was mildly embarrassing that for so long no one was willing to step up and take on a mayor who virtually every poll found to unlikeable and mired in endless mini-scandals. But it’s mind-boggling to imagine that after all this back and forth as to whether Gray or Peebles would run, both may well do so. One of the late 2009 polls that first found that Fenty was extremely vulnerable also found that if two relatively well-known quantities ran against him, they would split the anti-Fenty vote and allow the mayor to gain a second term with as little as 34 percent of the vote. While this possibility once motivated Peebles to say he would run only if Gray didn’t, the Post is now reporting that people close to the wealthy developer claim that Gray’s decision won’t affect Peebles’.

As with so much that’s been reported in this year’s mayoral race, all of this is still utter conjecture. Until either Gray or Peebles — or both — formally declare their candidacies, an easy Fenty victory is in the cards. And even if they do both enter the race, Fenty will merely have to turn the ignition on his campaign while Gray and Peebles will have to build theirs from the ground up. (Peebles will be able to use his own personal wealth, while Gray will still have to do some serious fundraising.) Of course, none of this precludes White House crasher Carlos Allen from entering the race, too.