And the Libertarians are holding candidate-training sessions for them all in a Center City high-rise.

As the election season opens, Philadelphia's small but driven political subcultures are starting to organize, sometimes banding together despite their diverse views to work on a common goal -- access to the public discourse.

In the mayoral race, Constitutional Party member John P. McDermott will be on the ballot next to Democrat John F. Street and Republican Sam Katz. Connie Allen, a member of the Socialist Workers Party, is running a write-in campaign for mayor. Five independent or third-party candidates, ranging from a Libertarian to a Green Party member, are running for City Council.

It may seem like a quixotic quest to seek office outside the two-party system in a city where the last person to be elected to a major municipal office who wasn't a Republican or Democrat was Rudolph Blankenberg, a progressive mayor elected as a Keystone Democrat in 1911.

But third-party candidates and leaders say they hope to add their ideas to the political debate, if not to win. The candidacies are often part of a long-term strategy to gather support and muster enough votes to have the party names printed on voter-registration cards or on primary ballots.

People run as third-party candidates "because they feel they don't have access to the government," says John Featherman, the ebullient spokesman for the Libertarian Party who ran for Congress in last year's special election.

"Third-party candidates run because either they have an agenda they want to forward and it gives them a podium, or because they believe they can win. Often, it's a combination of both," Featherman said.

It isn't easy if you're a third-party candidate, especially in a place like Philadelphia. There are no $1,000-a-plate, fund-raising events to fall back on, no lists of thousands of people ready to pull the party lever in the voting booths.

Often the incumbent Democrat or Republican won't show up at public debates with you. Tough state laws setting formulas for how many supporters parties must have to qualify for a primary or how many signatures candidates must get to qualify for the ballot often require third-party and independent candidates to exert tremendous efforts even to participate in an election.

And then there is the temperament of the Philadelphia electorate.

Some of Philadelphia's third-party candidates represent national parties that have elected members to significant offices elsewhere. The Greens, part of a social movement that won significant power in western Europe, elected a member to the California state legislature last year.

But here, third-party candidates have remained outsiders.

"Philadelphia has a mainstream electorate, and it's a politically conservative electorate," says local Democratic political consultant Larry Ceisler. "People will tolerate corruption and incompetence, but I don't think they'll tolerate independence."

Among the most visible third parties here was the Consumer Party, which mounted mayoral campaigns, successfully focusing debates on its message of public and business accountability, said Randall Miller, professor of history at St. Joseph's University. But after founder Max Weiner died in 1989 and his successor Lance Haver left full-time activism, the Consumer Party has faded.

"The absence of that voice has muted somewhat the independent voice of Philadelphia," Miller said. "It takes a while for an independent voice to gain stature."

Among those vying to gain stature are the seven independent or third-party candidates running this year, each with a different idea about which issues the two major parties are not addressing.

In addition to mayoral candidates McDermott and Allen, the group includes Libertarian Steve Kush and Reform Party candidate Anthony Archevala, who are running for the First District City Council seat against incumbent Democrat Frank DiCicco and Republican Joseph Simiriglio. Green Party candidate Eugene Miller is running for the Fifth District City Council seat against Democrat Darrell Clarke. D. Dexter Watson, a former Republican, is running as an independent in the City Council at-large race. John Staggs of the Socialist Workers Party is running a write-in campaign for City Council at-large.

Some of these parties have been running candidates in the city for a while. The Libertarians, who believe in little government interference in personal lives, have been vying for municipal office in Philadelphia since 1994 and have elected people to small offices, such as inspector of elections. Kush, the First District Council candidate, is the only Libertarian on the ballot this time.

"The Libertarians most closely represent most people's views," Kush, 32, manager of the Mattress King store at 15th and Walnut Streets, said as he sat in the mattress showroom on a recent morning. "It's a live-and-let-live philosophy."

The Socialist Workers Party, headquartered at Pathfinder Books on South Street near 19th, has had candidates in Philadelphia elections on and off over the years. This year, Allen and Staggs plan to do much of their campaigning through their party newspaper, the Militant.

Their platform focuses on the empowerment of workers and farmers. They oppose the police antidrug effort known as Operation Sunrise. "We view it as an occupation of the community," Allen said.

This is the first venture into Philadelphia elections for the Greens, whose campaign literature says the party is based on "timeless values: living in harmony with the land, its creatures, and each other."

Candidate Eugene Miller, a computer-systems analyst at Philadelphia Gas Works, describes the Greens as "the kind of folks who meet in the basement of the Unitarian Church."

As an interest group, the Greens have been around in Philadelphia for about 10 years, lobbying on issues ranging from the environment to the death penalty (they're opposed). But this year, Miller said, "We decided that if you're a party, you have to run candidates. Otherwise, you're just a protest group and outside the orbit of public decision-making."

Though some candidates say they've always been independents, some are disaffected former members of the major parties. D. Dexter Watson, the independent Council at-large candidate and a former aide to Sen. Rick Santorum, left the Republican Party in the spring and dropped out of the Republican primary because he opposes abortion and gun control. McDermott, 48, a former Republican activist, left the party over the abortion issue.

Said former Democrat Anthony Arechavala, 30, the Reform Party candidate who's running his campaign out of his apartment/office on Third Street: "We hope by continually putting people out as candidates, we can build the organization to a point where we can compete effectively with the Democrats. It's not going to happen overnight. You have one party that runs this city with impunity, with no checks, no balances."

Arechavala, whose party compatriots plan to capitalize on the Jesse Ventura connection by going to pro-wrestling matches to register members, is accepting only contributions of $50 or less from individual donors, and none from businesses or political action committees. Like most third-party candidates, he doesn't expect to spend much money.

"We can't even afford a campaign office," he said, standing in his apartment, a studio with a leather couch and a couple of boxes of cereal atop the refrigerator.

As Arechavala commuted to his New Jersey legal office to meet with a client one recent afternoon, his apartment became the site of a collaborators' meeting.

Libertarian Party president John Famularo and local Reform Party treasurer David Schrier sat on the couch, discussing Fair Election Watch, the project that will bring members of many third parties together to train poll watchers and to work together on Election Day to watch each other's vote counts at the polls.

Famularo got the idea for Fair Election Watch after Featherman's congressional campaign last year, when the votes for the Libertarian candidate sometimes were not transcribed onto the counting sheets by poll workers and did not make it into the official count. Famularo, who inspected some of the voting machines, said he believed that although Featherman got 900 votes in the official count, he actually got twice that many.

To the third parties, every vote is important, even if they aren't close to winning. A strong showing helps inspire their supporters to remain loyal, and also helps them qualify for ballot access.

Schrier, a Reform Party stalwart who keeps in his wallet a photo of himself with his arm around a cardboard cutout of Perot, says the undercounting "shows the derision in which [ poll workers ] held independent candidates."

Famularo hopes to change that with a force of independent and third-party workers that will be out on Election Day. Though some of these groups are much farther apart ideologically from one another than they are from Republicans or Democrats, their views will not matter on that day, he says.

"We're most interested in keeping the process as open as possible," Famularo said. "So there's no reason why we can't cooperate on those things that have nothing to do with ideology."