Last Friday I wrote in this space my guess that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper would run for governor and make his announcement this week.

I can still go one for two.

Obviously, Hickenlooper didn’t announce his intentions regarding the governor’s race this week, but there is still a very good chance that he will run for governor…and I still maintain that he will indeed take the plunge. I will refrain, however, from making any more predictions about when he will make his announcement, because I don’t know and I don’t think anyone knows.

And that’s the interesting thing about John Hickenlooper: nobody really knows what he is going to do, or when he is going to do it, because there is no indication that he knows for sure what he is going to do. Everybody can — and will — speculate about whether or not Hickenlooper will run for governor, but it doesn’t sound like he has made a firm decision. Normally something like this leaks out eventually, because uncovering local political secrets isn’t like trying to find weapons of mass destruction in a desert (okay, so that joke has been wayyy overused, but it’s Friday afternoon — give me a break), but in this case there may be nothing to leak if Hickenlooper doesn’t know himself.

Anyway, I’m still predicting that Hickenlooper will run for governor in 2006. I just can’t tell you when he is going to figure that out himself.