Who’s the most popular guy in town these days?

Regis Philbin, host of the "Millionaire" show? No.

Joe Torre, the calm Yankee leader who’s poised for a three-peat? Guess again.

The answer is photographer Barry Brown of Flushing, Queens.

Barry who?

Well, the newshound shutter-bug is the only man
in the city in possession of a valuable photograph that has everybody from Hillary’s people to every media organization in town calling him around the clock — a candid portrait of a smiling Rudy Giuliani shaking hands with neo-Nazi Austrian leader Joerg Haider at a recent dinner in the city.

"Everybody wants this photo," Brown told us late last week. "Even Hillary’s campaign people keep on calling asking if I’ll sell it to them."

The communications world is changing so fast, stone tablets may soon be reappearing.

In 1998, the Jesse Ventura gubernatorial campaign made breakthrough use of the internet in organizing support and fundraising. Last year it got more notice with JesseNet, an e-mail network designed to mobilize Ventura sympathizers to lobby legislators out in the heartland of Minnesota on a variety of issues. (Rebates on snowplows?)

But recently, JesseNet sent out this: "The Legislature is flooded with e-mails everyday. Phone calls are more effective than e-mails in getting your message across. Hard copy letters via snail mail are even more effective. At a minimum, send an e-mail. To really get your voice heard, call and write as well."

The real race hasn’t even begun, but based on the early signs it’s going to get real ugly between Rudy and Hillary. And the little guy is starting to feel it.

NYConfidential has learned that Team Rudy is so sure that Team Hillary is going to try to plant some spies within the campaign operation that no one is above suspicion. One GOP insider told us late last week that a long-time Republican supporter tried to join Rudy’s cause as a volunteer and was told to set up an interview and bring a resume.

Our source — a bonafide Rudy loyalist — was stunned by this level of scrutiny because he said that in the past, volunteering was as simple as showing up to GOP headquarters and signing up.

Who is the local elected leader with the big Chesire cat grin that seems to be getting bigger and bigger each week?

It’s none other than Public Advocate Mark Green who is sitting in the catbird seat waiting for the results of the Rudy-Hillary heavyweight battle so he knows what he’s going to do for the rest of his career.

Last week, Green got two bits of good news — first, two local polls show that the Mayor still maintains his slim lead over the First Lady in the battle to replace Pat Moynihan. Rudy’s success would mean that Green goes to the head of the class and leapfrogs past all those pesky competitors like Alan Hevesi and Peter Vallone.

Then, his prime rival in 2001, Comptroller Hevesi, starts battling publicly with Rudy over future budgets, thus undercutting the argument that Rudy and Alan have a secret backroom deal to stay on good terms so Hevesi eventually moves up to City Hall.

Hevesi critiqued the Mayor’s budget which provoked a nasty little exchange. "...for the long term it’s a very, very problematic budget. It presents huge numbers of serious problems," said Hevesi in published reports last week.

The Mayor, never one to let criticism — mild or otherwise — go by without a counterattack, unleashed this fusilage: "[Hevesi] hasn’t been right on the budget in six or seven years. We’ve accomplished a turnaround in the economy of the city and I would suspect that the comptroller, not having been part of that, is probably a little jealous."