The seperate campaign appearances by Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois following that by former President Bill Clinton raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah to defeat his Republican rival, Michael Gessner of Elkins Park. But Fattah needs a boost from Clinton and Obama to defeat Gessner about as much as Kim Jung Il needs a nuclear bomb to feed his people.

Undoubtedly that campaign cash raised by the national Democrats will be used to defeat local Democrats in the Philadelphia mayoral primary election next spring, an election in which Chaka Fattah is the presumed front runner. Fattah is expected to easily win reelection to Congress in a few weeks before he declares his candidacy for mayor -- as he told a gathering of the Philadelphia Bar Association yesterday -- on Nov. 21, his birthday. At this point, Fattah looks as mayoral as Ed Muskie looked presidential before the New Hampshire primary in 1972. Which is to say, anything can happen. And probably will.

Here's my problem, my question about Chaka Fattah. I don't know if he's hungry enough. I don't know if he's tough enough to be mayor of Philadelphia. What put this in my mind was a simple fact; I don't know the sound of his voice. I have voted for the guy as either my state senator or congressman for the last 20 years, and in all that time I never heard him speak. Not that I remember, anyway. And I can't think of a single successful candidate for mayor of Philadelphia who wasn't a well known voice to me even before he announced he wanted the city's top job.

I was too young for Joe Clark or Richardson Dilworth, but I remember their voices. The city's longest serving mayor James H.J. Tate (as president of City Council, Tate took over as mayor when Dilworth resigned to run for governor, and then won election twice) had a Philadelphia accent that could crack slate. Frank Rizzo (heh, heh, heh) was an unforgettable mayoral voice, followed by the high mosquito Irish tenor whine of Bill Green, who begat," I am, indeed, in fact,"Wilson Good, who begat the hairy leather growl of Ed Rendell, who begat that school marmish scolding sound of John Street.

All of those voices were well known to Philadelphians before each of those men ran for mayor. And let's not forget the charming chirpy croak of Thacher Longstreth or that nasal drill press sound of Sam Katz, memorable and valient Republican candidates. After all these years, how could I not know the sound of Chaka Fattah's voice as well as, say, the overachieving adolescent baritone wonk of announced mayoral candidate Michael Nutter, or even that Northeast astroturf over gravel crunching of possible candidate Jonathan Siedel.

I'm not saying Chaka Fattah hasn't been talking to me for the last 20 years. I'm just wondering why I haven't heard him. What has he been saying that I've been missing? Last week Philadelphia Weekly columnist Kia Gregory asked Fattah to, once and for all, come out and say he's running for mayor. He replied, "One of the things I'm trying to determine is if I were going to change course and run for mayor, if I would do that in a significant way. I want to make this city 100 times better than it is today. Not just slightly better, but substantially better."

A hundred times better, huh? Sounds like a man who is well pleased with his current job.