Aside from primary-campaign manager and media consultant Joe Trippi, who will begin working full-time in November, Knox has retained David Dunphy from D.C. to be his deputy campaign manager. Other employees of the Knox crew include chief of staff Art Mullin, finance director Josh Morrow and campaign CFO Melanie Lighty.

"I am actively looking for a communications director," said Knox, who added he was interviewing several potential candidates.

In addition to the paid staff, Knox said there are a lot of volunteers too. While it's no secret that Knox, a self-made man, loaned his campaign $5 million, he has raised an additional half million since March.

"I have a lot of wealthy friends," explained Knox. "I have a full Rolodex of names that I call for money. Some say yes and some say no, but I am getting money."

One advantage Knox said he has is that he is not tapping into the same money pool as the other mayoral wannabes.

"It's hard for [the other wannabes] because of the other races going on right now, like the governor's race and the U.S. Senate race, not to mention the contested congressional races," he said. "Look how much money Joe Sestak has raised."

(Sestak, a Democrat and former Naval vice admiral, is running against incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon.)

While Knox admits he doesn't have the same name recognition as the others who want to control City Hall — Fattah, Dwight Evans, John Dougherty, Michael Nutter, Jonathan Saidel and state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams — he said he is the only candidate who can't be bought.

And although he has not had a splashy announcement, he was the first to publicly say he is running. Other than Nutter and Saidel, the rest remain coy about their plans.

Knox, who resides in Rittenhouse Square, has been compared to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in media reports, which can be good or bad depending on whom you talk to. As an owner of Bloomberg News, Bloomberg is a billionaire several times over who poured big bucks into his campaign while maintaining a high profile on The New York Times society pages. But in his second term, his approval rating has soared. One reason is his smoking ban, an issue that Nutter has successfully championed here.

Knox is not in the same financial league as Bloomberg, but his net worth is not shabby.

"A lot of people I talk to don't know who Michael Bloomberg is," said Knox. "And then of course other wealthy people I know do know him — and that's good."

Over the past 30 years, Knox founded several successful banking and health-care insurance companies and then sold them. In 1992, he joined then-Mayor Ed Rendell's cabinet as a deputy mayor for the Office of Management and Productivity to help balance the budget. There, he was paid $1 a year at his own request.

One of the Knox campaign platform's priorities is to have everyone in the city treated equally. "I see what goes on in city agencies," he said. "People get treated differently. I get treated differently because of who I am and that shouldn't be. Ask the Vietnamese people how they are treated, and it's not the same."

Like Fattah, Knox is hosting a series of town meetings to hear concerns from residents; he also isn't attending these meetings, but is receiving the feedback.

While the same big three issues — drugs, crime and education — predominate the discussions, Knox also maintains that the city should invest in training schools to help people secure jobs. He wants to see the state and federal governments kick in funding, too.

"I get calls from CEOs in big companies who want to move their companies here, but they are concerned about the workforce," he said. "How can they be assured that the workforce is here? We used to have skills training schools for kids, then somewhere along the line, the school system decided that everyone should have a liberal arts degree."

Knox said at the end of the day, he sees Nutter and Evans as his Democratic primary opponents. He said he would run the city like a CEO of a corporation and not hire his friends to fill jobs.

Meanwhile, the Franklin and Marshall Keystone poll is preparing the first examination of all the mayoral candidates, whether they have declared or not.