By Gregory Korte
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Until Tuesday, Jerry Springer hadn't even told his closest friends whether he would run for Congress.

Today, he will tell the rest of us.

Only Springer and a "small circle of friends" know whether he'll leave his job as a TV talk-show host to ask Ohioans to let him represent them in the U.S. Senate, said Springer strategist Dale Butland.

The former Cincinnati mayor will reveal his political plans at 2 p.m. today in Columbus.

"There's not going to be a balloon drop. We've got a room," said Butland. "We're not getting coffee this time. The last time we did something, we bought coffee and no one drank it. So you're all drinking water."

And that's about as much detail as Springer staffers would give on today's announcement.

Even state and national Democratic leaders are out of the loop.

Jon Corzine, a New Jersey senator and chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said he didn't even know the talk-show host was going to make an announcement.

"I'm not fighting the man and I'm not encouraging the man," Corzine said, repeating that Springer isn't his "first choice."

Some political analysts said the lack of any pre-announcement buzz - or courtesy calls to important Democrats - suggests Springer's answer will be no.

But a Springer campaign would be unconventional, to say the least.

He's already spent seven months on the campaign trail, hitting Democratic events in more than half of Ohio's 88 counties. His exploratory committee has been better financed than some declared candidates', with a Web site and 30-minute infomercial pushing a Springer candidacy across the country.

Still, Springer has flirted with a return to politics before. In 1999, Hamilton County Democratic Party Chairman Tim Burke floated the idea of a Springer campaign against Sen. Mike DeWine. The idea was short-lived, and DeWine went on to beat Democrat Ted Celeste by 24 percentage points.

Springer believes only he can give the Democrats the name recognition and the fund-raising ability needed to defeat Sen. George Voinovich, one of Ohio's most popular politicians. But since January, he has acknowledged the difficulty in "cutting through the clutter" of the Jerry Springer Show, which features outrageous scenarios that usually involve cheating lovers, strippers and bizarre sexual situations.

Even as he established an exploratory committee and officially filed papers to run with the Clerk of the Senate, Springer insisted those were merely technical steps. The real decision would come after a considered assessment of whether he would have a shot at winning.

Springer made that calculation during a family vacation in Italy last week, returning late Monday. Aides said he "truly agonized" over the decision.

Still, his would-be opponent for the Democratic nomination has complained that Springer has already dragged out the decision for too long.

"He sure looks like a candidate, acts like a candidate and smells like a candidate," state Sen. Eric Fingerhut has said. "Until he says he's not, you have to assume he's a candidate."

Whether Springer runs or not, Fingerhut said, he is in the race to stay.

Gannett News Service and the Associated Press contributed to this story. E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com