Team Nickels' reelection bid looks look like a cakewalk. Nickels, who's only drawn one minor-league challenger, kicked off his campaign with a 900-person fundraiser breakfast at the Westin last week--bagging around $70,000. But there is a cloud hanging over the Nickels campaign: Council Member Peter Steinbrueck.

It's not that Steinbrueck is going to jump into the race at the last minute. It's that the popular Steinbrueck--with whom the mayor has a paranoid obsession/competition--ran in a similar no-contest campaign in 2003, scoring a gargantuan 82.49 percent of the vote against his lone, low-level challenger. The pressure is now on Nickels' campaign to match that margin and hold Nickels' challenger, idealist ideologue Christal Wood, under 17.51 percent of the vote. NANCY DREW

The KUOW Challenge: Air America

Air America radio talker and potential Minnesota senate candidate Al Franken brought his increasingly popular show to Town Hall on Monday, May 9, for a live performance before some 800 adoring fans.

The full Air America lineup has been broadcasting locally on KPTK AM 1090, formerly a country station, since late October, and is already posting more than respectable ratings. Franken's show, airing from 9:00 a.m. to noon, posted a 2.4 share in the all-important 25-54 demographic in the winter ratings book, tying with KIRO 710 and handily beating KVI 570. Conservative talk station KTTH 770 drew a hefty 6.3 share in the morning slot. Noncommercial KUOW, the public radio station that obviously mines the same liberal demographic as Air America, isn't surveyed for market share. SANDEEP KAUSHIK

Rainier Valley Challenge: CASA Latina

A controversy that's been rocking Rainier Valley since last December wound down on Tuesday, May 10. Much to the chagrin of Rainier Valley residents, CASA Latina, a Belltown social service organization--known for its day-laborer program--was poised to move into the old Chubby & Tubby space on Rainier Avenue. Neighbors had pegged the prominent site for much-needed commercial development.

Tuesday morning, CASA Latina announced it would bow out of its option to buy the Chubby & Tubby property. Community leaders--who've been in mediation with the organization and the mayor's office all spring--reiterated their original offers to help CASA Latina find a different site, perhaps somewhere else in the neighborhood. AMY JENNIGES