What does it say when an incumbent turns around a week before the primary and goes negative? And when his own press release trumpets the fact: “After months of playing rope-a-dope with a relentless barrage of negative attacks from challengers, the reelection campaign of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels today began to set the record straight.” Rope-a-dope? Isn’t that what your opponents accuse you of?

What all this says is that the field is in ferment and not turning Nickels’ way. On the positive side, the mayoral machine has been tireless, announcing new senior housing, farmer’s markets, streetlight repairs, car-charging stations, and youth-violence summits at every turn. Did you ever see so many road crews out at once? A month ago it looked like the stars (if you want to call his challengers that) were all lining up in Nickels’ favor. James Donaldson, immensely charming but green, and Jan Drago, immensely seasoned but charmless, were the only ones polling in double digits. Their messages—“I’m more likable than Greg Nickels even though I have no idea what his job entails” and “I’m not Nickels but I’ll do all the same things he does”—were hardly overwhelming.

But two new polls show Drago and Donaldson plummeting and Mike McGinn and Joe Mallahan in a virtual tie for second place, just five or six points behind Nickels. McGinn is trying to seize the green ground from America’s Green Mayor by hammering relentlessly on the waterfront tunnel, promising to dump the deal with the state to build it. *Mallahan*’s trying to emerge as the champion of both social justice and fiscal prudence by attacking Nickels’ Mercer Corridor plan, over not merits but money. Make the landowners—i.e. Paul Allen—pay more, he urges, implicitly invoking the specters of the Commons, Seahawks Stadium, and SLUT. It’s a mad, mad world when the corporate (T-Mobile) executive in the race finds common cause with anti-development crusader John Fox.

So no more Mr. Nice Mayor. This week Team Nickels punched back with broadsides and videos savaging McGinn and Mallahan, even using extracts from the latter’s ads. It accuses McGinn of “deliberately misleading voters” into thinking Seattle could save money by nixing the $4.2 billion tunnel (most of which the state will pay for) when it will still be on the hook for $936 million in surface work plus hundreds of millions in highway connections and other improvements that the state would pay with the tunnel. Indeed, McGinn’s website does gloss over these finances, declaring simply that the tunnel “will cost $4.2 billion, requiring the largest tax increase in Seattle history,” with no mention of the state’s role.

That’s mild stuff compared to the anti-Mallahan attack video posted today. It charges Mallahan proposed “a tax for Mercer Street that was unconstitutional,” didn’t vote in six city or state elections, and helped lead a gay-unfriendly, union-busting company, and that in sum “Joe don’t know jack.”

Heady stuff. Any bets whether that ad makes it from the YouTube try-out room to prime time? Whatever the merits—and McGinn’s tunnel claims and Mallahan’s background both demand close scrutiny—it’s extraordinary to see an incumbent swing this hard in a crowded primary.

The danger in such attacks is that you raise opponents to your level at a time when they welcome any attention. But wait, maybe that’s Team Nickels’ subtle strategy: They see good grey, familiar Jan Drago as the strongest opponent in the end, and want to make sure McGinn or Mallahan gets through the primary!

Never mind. Anyway, which one makes it will show whether tunnel terrors or Mercer misgivings cut deeper.