Not too long ago, I was driving through a neighborhood in the southern end of New London and drove by a pedestrian who looked familiar.

It turned out to be Daryl Finizio, who wants to be the city's next mayor. He was going door to door, collecting signatures to force a Democratic primary in the upcoming election. I stopped the car to get out and chat.

Finizio, despite casual summer attire of a T-shirt and shorts, looked especially organized. Indeed, he shared his roadmap, a clipboard with color-coordinated lists of voters indicating which ones were newly registered, which ones were longtime voters and which ones had voted in the most recent election.

I have also run into other Finizio signature collectors around town since July 19, when the Democratic Town Committee overwhelmingly nominated City Councilor Michael Buscetto III to run for the new job of mayor, giving him 52 votes to 6 won by Finizio and 17 by another candidate.

Then, last week, Finizio presented close to 400 signatures to the Democratic registrar of voters, securing a primary challenge in September for the Democratic nomination for mayor, the next big event in the city's historic race to choose a powerful full-time mayor.

Finizio noted that he secured signatures for more than a third of the number of Democrats who voted in the last Democratic primary in the city in 2010, to decide between Dannel Malloy and Ned Lamont for governor.

"Change is coming!!" Finizio wrote in a press release announcing the results of his signature drive.

I was impressed by his interpretation of the number of signatures he collected and thought, yes, signing up more than a third of the number of Democrats who voted in the last primary would seem to bode well for his challenge.

After all, with a crowded race that now includes, in addition to the Democrat, the Republican candidate and three independents, the final decision - only 3,380 voters turned out for the 2009 City Council election - could swing on only hundreds of votes.There are no polls, after all, so those of us interested in the outcome of this new mayoral race need to look at whatever tea leaves might be falling.

I then called Democratic Registrar of Voters William Giesing to get a better fix on the numbers, for a closer reading of these particular tea leaves.

Indeed, Giesing confirmed, 1,321 Democrats voted in the 2010 primary in the city. In the 2008 presidential primary, 1,887 Democrats in the city turned out to vote.

Giesing, who last week was preparing to order ballots for the Sept. 13 Democratic primary, said he considers the larger turnout in the presidential primary to be a better barometer for the mayoral race.

He added another 20 percent to the 2008 turnout, threw in some more for ballots lost to mistakes at the polls, and, in the end, prepared to order 4,300 ballots for September.

While Finizio said he collected close to 400 signatures, Giesing said about 310 were found to be valid and certified. Five percent of the city's registered Democrats, or about 280, were needed.

I caught up with candidate Buscetto on Friday and he told me he wasn't impressed by the signature drive.

"Overall, he got just above the minimum required," Buscetto said. "I think voters want better than just barely good enough."

"He got the five percent of the registered Democratic voters," Buscetto said. "He did not get the 95 percent of registered Democratic voters who are still out there. I look at it that way."

Buscetto also made the good point that people sometimes just sign petitions to get away from the signature taker and move on.

Meanwhile, in other tea leaves falling last week, city police Chief Margaret Ackley seemed to me to signal her own prediction in the mayoral race, choosing, apparently, to negotiate the terms of her continuing employment with the existing city manager instead of the next mayor.

The chief privately told friends she wants out.

Ackley and her lawyer specifically asked that Councilor Buscetto not be included in the bizarre closed-door meeting held to discuss her job status.

Buscetto said he politely declined to be excluded, saying he wanted to be present if someone was going to criticize him.

He also suggested they might not have wanted him there "because I have a history of asking questions and holding people accountable."

Ackley has been publicly mum about her intentions, and her attorney did not return my phone calls.

The other interesting thing I noticed in the numbers Giesing provided Friday was the percentage of Democrats in the city.

Of course I knew that Democrats predominate. But the numbers, 5,608 Democrats versus 1,212 Republicans and 5,209 unaffiliated voters, are stark.

Sept. 13 will be a big milestone in the city's choice of its first powerful mayor in decades. And we'll be counting real votes then, instead of assessing signatures or reading tea leaves.

This is the opinion of David Collins.