Mayor Gifford Miller

As Mike Lupica points out here, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller was once the March frontrunner in the Democratic primary.

Christine Quinn is the frontrunner now.

That does not mean she is the inevitable nominee.

Lupica points out that she has a bit of an identity problem.

While she started as a progressive activist, she has acted as a Bloomberg lapdog during her years as speaker.

So what kind of campaign does she run?

Does she run a progressive campaign or does she run a "Four More Bloomberg Years" campaign?

The problem for her is, there are better candidates for both of those roles.

Lhota makes the better case for another four years of Bloomberg policies.

De Blasio has positioned himself as the progressive better than Quinn ever could.

So Quinn is running a campaign that lacks a strong rationale.

Maybe she's good enough to win anyway.

She's a skilled politician, that's for sure.

But that doesn't make her the inevitable nominee or eventual mayor, no matter what the March polls say.