CHICAGO On a rainy morning in the historic Bronzeville district earlier this month, Lori Lightfoot , Chicagos embattled first-term mayor, was fired up. Flanked by more than a dozen Black clergymen and small-business owners, she recounted the biblical story of Joshua, who brought down the walls of the city of Jericho with the trumpeting of horns. So, too, Lightfoot insisted, would her second term in office tear down the barriers to investment in the citys underserved communities.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is our Jericho moment! she declared, prompting cries of affirmation from the ministers standing behind her.

But then, as lyrical speeches gave way to a brief question-and-answer period with reporters, a veteran Chicago journalist brought the discussion back to the prosaic matter of Lightfoots treacherous path to victory.

Given the hostility that Lightfoot faces from both her right and her left, the reporter asked, what base of voters in the city can she claim as her own?

My base? My base is all over, she replied. You listen to people that have stood up and endorsed me all over Black Chicago, brown Chicago, white Chicago. From the tip of the city, from Roseland, all the way up to Rogers Park East and West.

Voting in Chicagos nonpartisan, citywide elections comes to a close on Tuesday. (Early voting in the race to lead the countrys third-largest city began on Jan. 26.)

If no candidate for mayor gets more than 50% of the vote, a two-person runoff will decide the winner on April 4.

Lightfoot has eight challengers: Paul Vallas, a former CEO of Chicago Public Schools and past city budget director; U.S. Rep. Jess Chuy Garca (D); Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson (D); businessman Willie Wilson; activist JaMal Greene; Illinois State Representative Kambium Kam Buckner (D); and Chicago City Council members Sophia King (D) and Roderick Rod Sawyer (D).

The crowded field alone virtually guarantees that no one will get an outright majority in the first round. The outstanding question is whether Lightfoot, who is barely holding on to second place in a recent poll , will make it to the runoff, let alone win a second term.

Vallas, a centrist and the only white candidate, is the consistent polling leader in Tuesdays election, and some prognosticators believe hes the front-runner. Vallas ties to more right-wing figures and groups have at once spooked progressives and emboldened Lightfoot, who portrays herself as the only viable alternative to Vallas bid.

HuffPost spoke to more than 30 rank-and-file Chicago voters, two Christian ministers, four City Council members (often referred to as aldermen) and the top-five polling candidates in the mayors race.

What emerged is a portrait of a mayor with considerable accomplishments, beset both by crises that are not entirely in her control and some problems of her own making.

Lightfoot, who is both Chicagos first Black woman mayor and its first openly gay mayor, faces headwinds that would test any leaders mettle. She is one of the first incumbent, big-city mayors seeking another term in office after presiding over the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the unrest following the police killing of George Floyd and a rise in violent crime that has swept the country.

The spike in crime has hit the racially segregated Windy City especially hard, given the disproportionate level of violence already plaguing predominantly Black, high-poverty neighborhoods on the citys South and West sides.

But if Lightfoot falls short, it will also be because her hard-to-pin-down ideology and her reputation for abrasiveness have left her with precious few allies.

When you are plotting a course that bounces between ideological lanes or some other category, youre in this weird mush zone, said Alyssa Cass, a New York City-based Democratic strategist who has advised candidates in similar situations. You can say youre not left and youre not right, but thats really hard to do. Are there enough people supporting you when you piss off the people on the left and the people on the right?

Its sort of like a Goldilocks problem, Cass added. Its easier to be too hot or too cold. But its harder to, say, sear something medium-rare.