Let the games begin

Where to start? Let’s go with the Kennedy succession. (This sounds like a Robert Ludlum title.) The race to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat will dominate everything in these parts right up to the special election on Jan. 19. In another theater of operations, State House savants consider a change in a law that would permit Governor Deval Patrick to make an interim Senate appointment until said election.

There’s already a nifty “Who’s On First?’’ quality to this thing. We learn last Wednesday, for example, that Christy Mihos, the gadfly’s gadfly, had all but dropped his plans to run for governor as a Republican - he ran last time as an independent - and was poised to zig into the fray for the Kennedy seat. Hey, limelight is limelight. The next day, we learn he had zagged back into the race for governor.

One online Globe reader compared him to an “oompa-lumpa.’’ I had no idea what an Oompa-Loompa was until I learned it is a creature dreamed up by author Roald Dahl. Oompa-Loompa is my new favorite word.

The world stopped spinning, sort of, while Joe Kennedy, the senator’s nephew, pondered his future. On Labor Day, he said he would not run. Had he wanted the seat, conventional wisdom held, it was his. No one I know thought Kennedy would run. We presumed when he left the House in January 1999 after 12 years there that he would run for governor at some point. Never happened.

He has since lived a comfortable life running his nonprofit Citizens Energy, which famously gives heating oil to low-income residents. It also famously gets cheap oil from Venezuela anti-American strongman Hugo Chávez, whose cynical generosity could have caused beaucoup problems for a candidate Kennedy.

Once Kennedy pulled out, the fun started. Former US representative Martin Meehan, one of our more nakedly ambitious politicians, announced last week he would not run. It must kill him to pass this one up, but he would instantly become the designated opportunist in the race. Besides, it would be tacky to leave his job as chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell after a mere two years.

Attorney General Martha Coakley was first out of the box, announcing before Labor Day that she’s running. She is the only woman in the race, and last week she bagged the critical endorsement of Emily’s List, the nation’s largest financial resource for women candidates. She needs dough and this outfit will bring her a lot of it.

Michael Capuano, a former mayor of Somerville, is definitely in, as is Steve Lynch, the prolife Democrat from South Boston who was going to run whether Joe Kennedy was in or not. As expected, Ed Markey, the dean of the state delegation, bowed out.

Markey correctly concluded he has too much juice in the House to give up for a freshman senator’s seat. He is a key player on the Hill on the environment and climate change. He’s carrying big water on the energy bill, and as a former chairman of a subcommittee handling telecommunications, he is an expert in the wilderness of phone and cable legislation. That said, he would have been the only one of this gang to look remotely senatorial.

Let’s see, we learned last week that City Year cofounder Alan Khazei of Brookline is interested. Representative John Tierney is eyeing it, too. Former Holbrook state representative and Bush White House chief of staff Andrew Card salivated early in the week, only to bow out at the end. Republican state Senator Scott Brown, whoever he is, entered the fray yesterday. I’m sure I’m forgetting someone. Oh, Ed O’Reilly, who challenged John Kerry in the primary last time, has decided not to run for the Senate seat. Stop the presses.

Then, of course, we have a spirited mayoral race, where Mayor Tom Menino faces a trio of challengers - City Councilors Michael Flaherty and Sam Yoon, along with chief bomb thrower Kevin McCrea.

They did their best to pummel him in two recent televised debates. Menino, in turn, has confected a weird Buddha-like serenity in the face of his attackers.

Menino’s presence in a TV debate, by the way, is as rare as a sighting of the Himalayan yeti. He did one in 2001 on a Saturday evening and another in 2005 on a Sunday morning, his staff tell me. I’m guessing upward of 30 people watched them. There were reports after the first debate that Menino aced it. Someone must have been watching the Cartoon Network.

Menino’s people succeeded in setting the bar so low that as long as he didn’t throw his pen at McCrea, he could claim victory.

Don’t forget the square dance for next year’s gubernatorial election. Patrick has been challenged by Charles Baker, a key Cabinet figure under Bill Weld and Paul Cellucci, and the savior of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. Baker is a serious threat to Patrick who can skate over Mihos in the primary and remove a chunk of moderate Democratic votes from Patrick in the general. And, hey, let’s also welcome Treasurer Timothy Cahill into the fray as an independent.

Whew. Right now, it looks like a three-way Senate race among Coakley, Capuano, and Lynch.

The games have begun. It’s time to settle back with a bag of Twizzlers and watch the show.

Sam Allis’s e-mail address is: allis@globe.com