Sacramento News & Review's Cosmo Garvin with the big scoop: Kevin Johnson might announce as soon as tomorrow a decision to run for mayor of Sacramento.

What would Mayor KJ would do for local arena talks? It couldn't hurt, that's for sure. It would've been more valuable four years ago, when Heather Fargo contributed to screwing the relationships up. But it cannot hurt.

KJ took a lot of lumps from the recent series of stories in the Sacramento Bee regarding St. HOPE's latent property holdings in Oak Park. But you cannot buy his name recognition. Today, more Sacramentans know KJ's face than Fargo's, and she's been mayor for, like, a decade. If he's in, he wins.

UPDATE: I can't believe I missed this on first read: Garvin (and the political minds he quotes) notes a KJ candidacy might provoke Assemblyman Dave Jones to jump in the frey. Honestly, nothing good (in strictly arena terms) could come of that: He doesn't need to defend his Assembly seat this June, so there's no chance he gets out of the way in the Legislature, and he certainly has his constituency. You'd think KJ would cream him, but if he didn't… Mayor Dave Jones would destroy local hopes for a new arena. DE-STROY. Need I remind you, he recently tried to get the Cal Expo board to refuse to even talk to the NBA about agreeing to negotiate over terms under which a new arena could conceivably be negotiated for. He wants nothing to do with the Sacramento Kings, which is a problem for those of us who'd like the Kings to stay in Sacramento. Go KJ.

UPDATE #2: Marcos Breton get an emergency Bee column on the subject up about four hours after the News & Review's piece… and does not mention the News & Review. Stay classy, Marcos. (You'd think a metro columnist who was a longtime sports columnist at the only daily in town might get to this story first? Yikes.)