Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums' wife, Cynthia, has been talking with city officials about the possibility that her husband will depart before his term ends Jan. 3, perhaps to take a lobbying job in Washington, D.C.

Adding fuel to the gossip fire: This week the mayor canceled his farewell State of the City address, which had been scheduled for today, and decided to post it on the city's website instead.

If Dellums were to step down, Mayor-elect Jean Quan would automatically replace him in her capacity as vice mayor on the City Council. Then she would be sworn in to her full four-year term as scheduled.

Dellums, who turns 75 next week, is under pressure to give the Internal Revenue Service a sizable check to clear up his $252,000 tax lien by the end of the year.

We're told Dellums has been exploring erasing the lien with an advance on speaking engagements as well as a possible signing bonus from a new lobbying job. He has also looked at how quickly he can access his city pension.

Dellums earns $183,000 a year as mayor. Under city law, he can't accept outside work and has restrictions on outside income as long as he remains in office. Hence the early resignation talk.

"Almost everything at this point seems to be related to how to get him back on financial track," said one source with inside knowledge, who asked for anonymity because he is not authorized to speak for Dellums.

On the other side of the ledger: Confidants inside and outside City Hall are telling Dellums and his wife that it will be yet "another bad story" for the outgoing mayor if he goes out prematurely.

Dellums' chief of staff, Marisol Lopez, told us Tuesday that "as far as I know right now, he is going to finish out his term."

Lopez declined to say which jobs Dellums has been offered down the line, if any.

"I know he has to make some decisions," she said. "He will have another career and another chapter in his life."

Count her in: Nothing's official yet, but San Francisco D.A. Kamala Harris' campaign people are getting the Champagne ready for what they expect to be a victory party in her race for state attorney general.

As of Tuesday, Harris had a 30,000-vote lead over her Republican rival, top Los Angeles County prosecutor Steve Cooley, in one of the tightest statewide vote counts in memory.

There are still roughly 500,000 votes to be counted, mostly mail ballots that were turned in on election day and must be tabulated by hand.

Harris has consistently led Cooley in the count of those ballots. Plus, the biggest chunk of outstanding votes is in Los Angeles County, where Harris outpolled Cooley on election day.

Reform redo: San Francisco labor leaders are expected to meet with financier Warren Hellman this week to start talking about pension reform.

"We made a promise - we are going to keep it," said firefighters union head Tom O'Connor. "We're going to bring in the experts and work on both pension and health care costs."

Unions spent more than $1.5 million to beat back Proposition B, a pension and health care initiative that Public Defender Jeff Adachiput on the Nov. 2 ballot.

Hellman initially endorsed the Adachi measure, but backed off after firefighters told him the proposal went too far.

Play ball: Oakland is going public with its proposal for a new 39,000-seat A's ballpark and mixed development near Jack London Square.

The Planning Commission has scheduled a Dec. 1 hearing to consider what should be studied as part of an environmental impact report for a project that would include a stadium, 180,000 square feet of retail space, 540,000 square feet of offices and 700 condos.

It would all be built on private and city Redevelopment Agency land near the Lake Merritt channel, between Interstate 880 and the Embarcadero.

"Taking wraps off this helps people understand there is a preferred (Oakland) alternative," said Planning Commission President Doug Boxer, who has been part of a private effort to keep the A's from leaving town.

As it stands, team owner Lew Wolff has made it clear that he's done looking at Oakland and wants the team to move to San Jose. But the Giants insist they have the sole territorial rights to the South Bay, and Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig hasn't publicly signaled where he stands in the fight.

The question is, without backing from the team or baseball, whether city officials will commit to the next big cost - a $300,000 to $400,000 traffic study that would cover about half the cost of any environmental impact report.

EXTRA! Catch our blog at www.sfgate.com/matierandross.