As New York heads into the dog days of a premature summer, there are only three months to go before the Democratic primary, in which voters will pick the probable successor to term-limited Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani: Public Advocate Mark Green, Bronx Borough President Fernando "Freddy" Ferrer, City Comptroller Alan Hevesi or City Council Speaker Peter Vallone. The conventional wisdom is that the primary is Mark Green's to lose--but with none of the four major candidates drawing anywhere near a majority in the polls, the smart money says there'll be a runoff. And if the Democratic winner is bruised by a nasty primary campaign, newly minted Republican Michael Bloomberg, a fresh "nonpolitical" face with very deep pockets, just might snatch his victory away in November.

Yet the political atmosphere in this once-feisty town can be summed up in one word: indifference. "Only the people already involved in politics are talking about the campaign," says retiring City Councilwoman Ronnie Eldridge, a veteran progressive. State Senator Tom Duane agrees: "There's no enthusiasm at all for any of the mayoral candidates--it couldn't be more unexciting."

What explains the ennui? For one thing, the four major Democratic candidates all reflect a slightly more liberal version of the galloping centrism that the national Democratic Party came to embody in the Clinton era. Says one influential progressive labor leader, "Issue by issue, the four candidates are virtually indistinguishable. They're all for tax breaks for corporations and all for a living wage. How do you figure out how they'd govern?"

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