LL would bet a side-door to the Wilson Building that Councilmember Vincent Orange isn’t going to run for mayor next year. But that’s not stopping Orange from being mysterious about it.

On the latest episode of The Rock Newman Show, boxing manager-turned-radio-host Rock Newman asks Orange who he plans to back in the mayor’s race. Orange holds back on making an endorsement, but he’s just as non-committal on whether he would make his own run for the top job.

“You never know,” Orange says. “I’m going to keep my powder dry at this point.”

Could it be? LL’s skeptical: Orange didn’t make a particularly strong candidate in 2006, netting less than 3 percent in the Democratic primary. And that was before Orange and a campaign donor were subpoenaed by the feds.

Then again, Orange, who didn’t respond to LL’s request for comment, sometimes does follow through on his hints that he wants to be mayor. His earlier mayoral campaign nearly ran afoul of election rules when Orange, still undeclared at the time, passed out a press release posing a fortune cookie-like question: “Vincent Orange a candidate for mayor? More likely than not.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery