Mark DeSantis, hoping to be Pittsburgh's first Republican mayor in more than 70 years, is sitting on a folding chair in his quiet Downtown campaign office, wearing jeans and a polo shirt, answering why in Davey Lawrence's name anyone would want this job.

I'm telling him the mayor just doesn't matter that much anymore.

The city makes up less than a quarter of the real Pittsburgh, which stretches at least as far north as Cranberry and south to Peters, as far east as Murrysville and west past the airport. The city is a 19th-century construction trapped in a 21st-century economy; its biggest employers, the "non-profit'' hospitals and universities, pay no taxes and never will; and most folks who work in the city commute to a house with a lawn that may be only 15 minutes away but is light years from the city's bottom line. Oh, and don't forget the hobbles that the state's two oversight boards put on the mayor.

"Why do I want to be mayor?'' Mr. DeSantis answered. "I actually want to change Pittsburgh.''

He figures the best way to do that is to win the region's "most responsible and visible" government job.

"The world does not see this metropolitan statistical area; the world sees the city of Pittsburgh.''

Mr. DeSantis, 48, should know how the levers of government work. He is now a technology consultant, but he has worked for such Republican luminaries as the late U.S. Sen. John Heinz, the first President Bush and former Allegheny County Chief Executive Jim Roddey. Mr. DeSantis also was an early and vocal advocate of the successful effort to streamline county government by tossing row officers such as the prothonotary and jury commissioner into history's dustbin.

He sees the mayor having two kinds of power: the controls of a $400 million-plus operation, and the stature to bring together people who "can talk about the unspeakable.''

By that he doesn't mean the stuff of Jerry Springer slugfests, he means more consolidation of city and county functions, privatizing other services and, down the road, having a countywide police force succeed the city's force and the dozens of others little cop shops scattered among the county's other 129 municipalities.

Mr. DeSantis is not long on specifics, having the outsider's advantage of no votes to critique. He did tell the Rotarians last week he'd take $18 million a year from the casino and $5 million or more in contributions from the city's non-profits to cut into the city's $469 million in unfunded pension obligations. That only allowed Mayor Luke Ravenstahl to ask where Mr. DeSantis expected to find $23 million that then would be needed to cover other city operations. That's the hard part of governing.

Mr. DeSantis can sound a bit like a new coach when he talks about what's possible.

"I believe that victory and defeat infect people. If you are on a losing team, you will continue to lose merely by the fact that you're on a losing team. It will affect your attitude about yourself, about what you think you can and can't do, about what you believe and how you view the world.''

He says non-profits would "be willing to pony up more if they had more faith in city government.'' But that sounds like hoping private garage operators will cut their rates if the parking tax goes down, and that ain't happening.

The fact is one reason Pennsylvania cities look bad compared with those in the "red states'' is that cities in the South and West have spent more than a half-century gobbling the land around them, making residents out of commuters whether they like it or not. They have a tax base that reflects America's current economic system.

Mr. DeSantis is undaunted by such talk, and says a better local economy and handle on city finances must precede city-county consolidation. You can't "just frontally say 'let's consolidate' when you carry all this baggage with you.'' He'll announce tax changes in a couple of weeks that he says will be more favorable to growth.

Even those of us skeptical of how much any mayor can do should be grateful there is a worthy adversary for Mayor Ravenstahl. No Democrats were willing to take on the mayor in the spring primary, but Mr. DeSantis says he can deliver a thriving economy, safer streets and better management of your dough than the incumbent. Sure, that's what all politicians say, but for a while there it didn't look as if this shrinking city could find two people ready to go to the mat to lead it.

The truth is I think Pittsburgh is worth fighting for, too. Labor Day has passed. Let the bout begin.