To a lot of Richmonders, it doesn't seem much of a choice: Dump Doug Wilder as mayor for his former aide-turned-bete noire, Paul Goldman. The city's noble experiment in common sense -- that of a directly elected, powerful mayor, a cheerleader who dispenses the strongest medicine -- is looking rather nonsensical. The promise of practical solutions to Richmond's problems lies broken, largely a casualty of Wilder's me-me-me-me style.

Cynics suggest Goldman's candidacy is an exercise in self-sacrifice that aids his on-again, off-again benefactor on Broad Street. In a crowded field, Goldman, a whiney, rumpled ex-Noo Yawker who still sounds the part, helps splinter the anti-Wilder vote. That assures the dapper, mellifluous mayor a second four-year term.

Other than Wilder, Goldman, an unsuccessful City Council candidate in the West End in 2006, may be the most scheming politician in town -- a cagey score-settler who doesn't forget, often because he is artful with the facts.

Despite their estrangement -- this is at least their second public falling-out -- Wilder and Goldman are like an old married couple.

Though somewhat dysfunctional, they reflexively anticipate each other's moods and moves, communicating through the equivalent of grunts and groans.

Lost in themselves, Wilder and Goldman nonetheless know each other's strengths and weaknesses, exploiting them through pointed gestures.

For example, Goldman said he's not running against anyone, he's running for Richmond. As Wilder would put it -- and he's used this line over the years in a different context -- "Ray Charles could see through that one."

But Goldman's quip only conjures a crack he made about Wilder after a previous spat more than a decade ago: "You have to stand for more than yourself."

The evolving campaign calls attention to a perceived failure of the new mayoralty: that beyond an inability to promote sustained accountability and efficiency within Richmond's rigid bureaucracy -- or maybe because of it -- few are motivated to participate in city affairs.

Another, bigger turnoff could be Wilder himself. What makes him a delight to cover inevitably distresses his constituents. Instead of telling you what you need to know, he tells you what you want to hear. His values are situational.

Wilder pushed for a popularly elected mayor and then stood for the office in 2004, because he -- like others -- professed embarrassment over the snake pit that was City Hall. Wilder branded it a "cesspool of corruption."

What passed for a reform impulse lifted him to the mayoralty and swept aside Reva Trammell, a council member who, by Wilder's standards at the time, seemed to embody all that was wrong with municipal government.

Two years later, Trammell was back on the council, replacing the member who had defeated her, Jackie Jackson. Trammell triumphed with what was seen as Wilder's tacit support. Jackson, running for mayor this year, committed the unpardonable sin of challenging the Wilder agenda.

Now it's Paul Goldman's turn to remind us that in Wilder's Richmond, politics is not only provincial, it's personal.
Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 649-6814 or jschapiro@timesdispatch.com. He provides news analysis each Friday at 8:33 a.m. on WCVE radio (88.9 FM).