Watching the Salt Lake City mayor's race from a distance of 40 miles and eight years, he has as good a sense as anyone what will happen.

"It will come down to a liberal candidate and a moderate-to-conservative candidate. And the more liberal candidate will win," says Reid, from his office in Ogden. Reid was the designated "moderate-to-conservative" who ran against Mayor Rocky Anderson in 1999 and ended up trounced.

Reid's conventional wisdom is not good news for Keith Christensen, the erstwhile Republican Reid and his one-time opponent both have endorsed. It's not great for GOP Councilman Dave Buhler, either.

With a limited number of moderate-to-conservative voters in the city, Buhler and Christensen are trying to get as close to the "D-word" as they can without looking like hypocrites.

But all the tie-dyed shirts, manipulations of Google searches and changes in party affiliation won't change the point spread in the end.

The fact is: Democrats own the mayor's office. Not just Democrats. Liberal Democrats.

"Party affiliation should not be the requirement in this," says Salt Lake County Republican Party Chairman James Evans.

But a Salt Lake Tribune poll published over the weekend shows how futile the effort is for conservatives. Voters are divided in fourths - one-quarter to County Councilwoman Jenny Wilson, one-quarter to Buhler, one-quarter undecided and another quarter split between House Minority Leader Ralph Becker and Christensen.

Eight years ago, no less than six Democrats were scratching for a spot in the general election. This time, the Republicans are cannibalizing each other. I feel sorry for them, desperately trying on wigs and partisan tags as they are.

Buhler's ad team has packaged him as the anti-Rocky - both in political persuasion and personality. He's "reasonable," a "bridge-builder," his billboards say. They even pushed the soft-spoken higher education lobbyist into doing a Rastafarian schtick on YouTube to buck ideological labels.

But at least Buhler has not renounced his party affiliation. Christensen did that.

The darling of business leaders, the Tribune editorial board and Rocky himself, Christensen abandoned the GOP a month ago in a transparent attempt to appeal to city voters.

It was all for naught, as the poll shows. After a six-year absence from the City Council, no one remembers the businessman - except possibly his friends in business, who have made him the winner in fundraising. With $263,000 of his half-million bank account left to spend, expect to see and hear a lot more of Keith.

"You'll see a change in the coming weeks," he said.

walsh@sltrib.com