For the people of Buffalo, Tuesday’s election will test whether the city really is truly ready to break from a history of poverty and corruption and steer toward new horizons. But for Byron Brown, the sitting mayor, write-in candidate, and loser of June’s Democratic primary, it’ll mean either the foreseeable end of his political career, or the next chapter in a more-than-decade-long tale of improbable political survival.

Normally, in a city that went 77 percent for Joe Biden this year, the winner of Buffalo’s Democratic mayoral primary is also the winner of its mayoral election. But Brown, through a combination of his own stubbornness, steadfast business backing, and some well-placed conflicts of interest, has survived what would’ve been a fatal defeat for anyone else and is running a viable independent write-in campaign — so viable that, as per one eleventh-hour poll, he’s now leading India Walton, the woman who beat him for the Democratic nomination, by seventeen points.

Brown’s political future now hinges on whether Walton can repeat her June success and drive up turnout from disaffected parts of the city long neglected by City Hall. He has every chance to win: over fifteen years and four elections, mounting corruption scandals, rampant city mismanagement, and the steadily deteriorating living standards of voters haven’t been enough to dislodge Brown from power. Will Tuesday end this state of affairs, or be one more Houdini-like escape in the career of Byron Brown?