A pulse.
If you are looking for something definitively separating Mark DeSantis' campaign from that of all other Republican Pittsburgh mayoral aspirants of, oh, the past five or six decades, a pulse would be it.
Thursday afternoon, Seventh Street, Downtown: DeSantis volunteer Camille Kersey stood cradling dozens of campaign signs when a car pulled up to the curb.
DeSantis campaign manager Mike Bauer quickly emerged.
He talked to me long enough to tell me he didn't have time to talk to me.
Then he rapidly loaded the signs into the vehicle and sped off to distribute them to DeSantis supporters.
The dynamic of this mayoral battle pitting DeSantis, 48, against accidental incumbent Luke Ravenstahl, 27, is vastly different from the one waged in 2005 between prohibitive Democratic favorite Bob O'Connor and badly undermanned Republican Joe Weinroth.
Shortly before that election, I visited Weinroth's campaign office -- a dingy, one-room storefront in Squirrel Hill. I found one worker inside, perched solitarily in front of a computer listening to KQV on the radio.
It was Weinroth.
He had raised just $10,000 in the four months leading up to the election, a paltry sum compared to O'Connor's $347,000. Yet Weinroth somehow still received 27 percent of the vote in a city with an overwhelming Democratic registration edge.
It's not a stretch to think that DeSantis -- who is expected to have close to $300,000 in his coffers when campaign finance reports are released today -- could fare considerably better, no matter how much more Ravenstahl has raised.
"When we got into this race, the only thing we wanted was to go into the last week or two with a chance to win. We have that," said Trip Oliver, DeSantis' policy director and a one-time aide to former Allegheny County Chief Executive Jim Roddey.
Even with the plentiful campaign contributions, DeSantis has a chance largely because Ravenstahl has bestowed one upon him.
Since the former City Council president became mayor after O'Connor died in September 2006, he has tried to turn City Hall into Delta House.
Space limitations prevent me from noting the entire litany of his well-documented adolescent antics. But Ravenstahl has done everything but stuff mashed potatoes into his mouth, send the spuds flying by punching his cheeks and then loudly proclaim, "I'm a zit!"
Suffice it to say that he remains under federal review for commandeering a police vehicle purchased with Homeland Security money to transport his wife and friends to a Toby Keith concert.
How many other cities can boast that about their mayor?
Ravenstahl's ongoing lurch toward Belushiism certainly has played a pivotal role in keeping the DeSantis campaign afloat. Will it be enough to pull off a major upset?
Probably not. But we're in uncharted territory.
At a time in the election season in which city Republican campaigns are always long dead and buried, the DeSantis campaign still has a strong pulse.
And Ravenstahl, most likely, has a headache.
