Slowly but surely the narrative is being formed in the 2017 race for ABQ Mayor. The latest public polling has Democratic attorney Brian Colón pole vaulting over the two most prominent Republican hopefuls in the field and putting himself in a near tie with Progressive Dem State Auditor and early front-runner Tim Keller.

The survey conducted for KOB-TV by automatic phone calls by the PR firm Carrol Strategies has Keller at 22.6 percent, Colon at 19.3 and the two major GOP Candidates--Dan Lewis and Wayne Johnson at 8 per cent each.

(In our first posting on Facebook and Twitter we reported based on our sources that Keller had 21 percent of the vote. )

The other four candidates are drawing low single digit support. Michelle Garcia Holmes polled at 5.8 percent; Ricardo Chaves at 3.5%; Gus Pedrotty received 1.9; Susan Wheeler-Deichsel was at 1.8 percent. Undecided is still a large 29.4 percent.

The poll seems under sampled with Republicans as Johnson and Lewis scored higher in the KRQE-TV poll as well as insider campaign polling that has been circulating.

The political buzz has been centered on the internecine warfare between the Republicans and whether it will keep both Lewis and Johnson from finishing in the top two and thus being denied a spot in the November run-off election that is expected to follow the October 3 balloting.

The poll of 513 voters, conducted September 3, 4 and 5, was done a week after Colón put up his first TV ad that focused on the city crime wave and featured an endorsement from Attorney General Balderas. It indicates that a Keller-Colón run-off is a real possibility.

(The margin of error in a poll of that size is about 4.5 percent.)

Keller's people warn there "is a lot to play out" and one of the R's could break free, displace Colón and get in that run-off, most probably with Keller. At least that's what they are hoping. Either Lewis or Johnson is seen as easy pickings for the Democratic hopeful in a one-on-one race in a Dem-dominated city. But Colón vs Keller is an entirely different matter, with the more conservative Colón seen as able to attract more R's than Keller.

The poll confirms what political observers of all stripes have agreed on--in a city election dominated by voters over the age of 50, TV can do some very heavy lifting.

Colón had the tube all to himself for a week and took advantage by making an appeal to the many Hispanic voters with that Balderas endorsement. He nearly doubled his support from 10 percent in the pre-TV ad poll conducted by KRQE-TV to the 19 percent in the KOB-TV survey.

Colón has now come with a second ad in which he doubles down on Balderas and again highlights the AG's support of his candidacy. Will it move him further up the ladder?

As for Johnson and Lewis, City Councilor Lewis does not have the appeal that BernCo Commissioner Johnson does to the conservative GOP base. But some of our Alligators say that Johnson will have to beat Lewis on the order of 60 to 40 percent among the GOP in order to catapult himself into a run-off. Ditto for Lewis against Johnson.

With Lewis failing to catch fire and not blocking Johnson yet, we are now adjusting our election model to fully include Johnson and have moved from "The Big 3.5" to "The Big Four." That would be Keller, Colón, Johnson and Lewis. One of them is now almost certain to be your next mayor.

This sleepy campaign is starting to awaken and the final stretch is turning out to be an engaging horse race. Early voting throughout the city begins on Wednesday.

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(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2017