According to the city’s elections officer, Sho Dozono stopped by this morning and filed his declaration of intent to collect $5 contributions and signatures in support of a mayoral bid. He also picked up 2,000 contribution forms. He’ll need to turn in 1,500 of those, properly filled out, by January 31.

Note: That’s three weeks to collect 1,500. If Dozono pulls it off, he’ll have blasted City Commissioner Erik Sten’s current record for collecting public financing contributions. Sten secured 1,000 in two months two years ago. Amanda Fritz, who’s done this twice now, needed two months and 18 days this time around. Best of luck, Sho.

Does he really think he can pull it off? Or is he kicking off his campaign with the populist campaign finance project, knowing it’s a nearly impossible task—and fully aware that he’ll have to abandon it?

Or, if he can pull it off, does that mean he’s been assembling a highly organized cadre of supporters since he launched websites like shoyoursupportforsho.com last month?

And here’s the final piece: What role does the political committee Friends of Sho Dozono have to do with any of this? For starters, the committee is registered as a non-candidate controlled committee, which goes against campaign committee rules, since Dozono’s daughter is the director of the committee:

A “controlled committee” is a political committee that, in connection with the making of contributions or expenditures:

• is controlled directly or indirectly by a candidate or a controlled committee

or

• acts jointly with a candidate or controlled committee

A candidate controls a political committee if:

• the candidate, the candidate’s agent, a member of the candidate’s immediate family or any other political committee that the candidate controls has a significant influence on the actions or decisions of the political committee

State elections officials are talking to the Friends of Dozono committee, and they’ll have to refile as a candidate committee.

It strikes me that this all adds up to posturing to make it look like there’s a grassroots groundswell propelling Dozono’s candidacy, when in fact things like his website registration, that dubious committee registration, and the seemingly-futile public financing bid say the exact opposite (or they point towards naivety, which isn’t much better).

Dozono wasn’t in when I called, so I don’t have any insight from the man himself—just speculation.