The three-ring circus on Thursday mornings in Room 696 of City Hall is great entertainment, but doesn’t provide an accurate snapshot of what really goes on in Philadelphia City Council. Most of the really good stuff happens out of the sight and earshot of both the voting public and pesky reporters. A good example to keep an eye on in the coming months is the quest for the lofty office of Council president.

Second District Councilwoman Anna Verna has held the office since 1999, when John Street gave up the president's chair to move downstairs to the mayor's office. Since then, Council's first female president has had a somewhat tempestuous relationship with her predecessor but has still enjoyed the support of a Council majority. Or so she thought until Third District Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell started making noise about her own presidential aspirations.

In mid-April, about a month before the primaries, Blackwell commissioned a poll by the Benenson Strategy Group, a New York-based consulting firm. The poll, Blackwell says, was "just a tool for my colleagues to use in their races," but some questions were eye-opening for Council members who might not have known about her ambitions.

When it came to citywide favorability, Blackwell's 68-percent rating ranked third behind only Operation Safe Streets (74 percent) and Mayor Street (71 percent). Notably, Verna received a 59-percent positive rating.

The killer poll question, though, was the head-to-head comparison between Verna and Blackwell, put thusly to the 400 registered Democrats interviewed: "City Council President Anna Verna is a long-time civic leader with a laid-back leadership style who has not forged a strong working relationship with Mayor Street. Jannie Blackwell, a city councilwoman, has been able to work with Mayor Street and would like to bring a more disciplined leadership to City Council and cooperate more strongly with the Street administration."

Put that way, 44 percent of the respondents said they'd go with Blackwell, while 36 percent picked Verna and 20 percent were undecided. The results must have buoyed Blackwell's hopes but if she's tickled pink, she's keeping her giggles to herself. When asked about her presidential aspirations earlier this week, she jukes and dodges.

"It's an honor just to serve," Blackwell gushes with as much sincerity as she can muster. "Most folks here would like to move up if given the opportunity, so I'm not going to lie and say the thought hasn't occurred to me. I'd be honored if my colleagues gave me the opportunity for Council leadership, but I don't want to look past the general election in November. Right now I'm focused on my re-election and the mayor's re-election."

It's a nice line and pretty standard stuff, but there's a little caveat: Blackwell is running unopposed in November, so her own re-election shouldn't require much of her focus, ostensibly leaving her more time to concentrate on the mayor's campaign and her dreams of sitting in the big chair at the front of the room. A chair, incidentally, that Verna is not ready to vacate just yet.

In a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon, Verna says she's been hearing whispers about Blackwell coming after her job for several months. Far from being nervous, Verna starts the conversation by laughing uproariously at Blackwell's poll.

"After that poll came out, one of my staff members got me a book called How to Lie With Statistics," Verna chuckles. "As you know, the outcome of any poll is totally dependent on how the question is asked. If you rephrase the question, you get a completely different set of answers. So I don't put a lot of stock in polls."

Verna says the wording suggests that the rift between her and the mayor is somehow a negative, when she sees it exactly the opposite.

"Look, I've been around here longer than I care to admit. George Schwartz had his own style, Joe Coleman had his own style, John Street had his own style, and Anna Verna has her own style," she says. "I'm not a rubber stamp for the mayor, that's true. But the voters of the Second District didn't put me here to be a rubber stamp, and I suspect that my colleagues in Council didn't want a president who was just a rubber stamp for the mayor. I'm my own person and that's how I try to lead."

Verna says that on the issues where she's locked horns with the administration, like the Philadelphia Gas Works senior discount or the condo trash-pickup controversy, she's not sorry for butting heads and would do it again in a minute. Finally, Verna says she just doesn't have time to concern herself with Blackwell's aspirations.

"It's much too early to talk about the Council presidency," she says, "I have a re-election campaign to run, and we're already starting to work on the fall agenda. We have to vote on important legislation before the Christmas break or it will die on the vine. Whoever wants to run for Council president can do so with my blessing but I have other things to worry about right now."

According to sources, neither Blackwell nor Verna can claim a solid majority of Council votes at this point, and that the outcome of the mayor's race may tip the scales. The lobbying, though, has already started, and Philly politics being what they are, knives are being sharpened.

Daryl Gale’s weekly radio show, Dialogues, with co-hosts Rotan Lee and Bill Miller, is burning up the airwaves Fridays 7-10 a.m. on WURD (900 AM) in Philadelphia.