It ain't over until it's over. That's the refrain of six losing Chicago aldermanic candidates. For them, the 2007 election won't be over until 2011, and they're going to spend the next 4 years campaigning and plotting to oust the incumbent.

An aldermanic election is always a referendum on the incumbent. The longer an alderman is in office, the more enemies he or she makes. A narrow 2007 win portends a likely 2011 loss.

But it's difficult for a candidate to create and maintain a presence in the ward. Elections are in late February. After the holidays and football playoffs, voters focus on aldermanic contests for just a few weeks. Residents expect their alderman to provide city services. A challenger can campaign for 4 years, but his or her problem is elemental: What can he or she do to help a resident in need? Answer: Nothing. So challengers run a Humpty Dumpty campaign and hope the incumbent falls off the wall.

In the 45th, 50th, 49th and 46th wards, 2007's losers are primed to run again in 2011. Here's the rundown:

45th Ward (Portage Park, Gladstone Park, Jefferson Park, Forest Glen): Incumbent Pat Levar has cause for concern. He won on Feb. 27 with 56.2 percent of the vote in a turnout of 13,125, but his 7,380 votes were 1,287 fewer than he got in 2003. And the combined vote (5,745) of his three 2007 foes, Terry Boyke, Anna Klocek and Bob Bank, was 1,009 more than Levar's two foes received in 2003 (4,736). Turnout in 2003 was 13,403.

That means that Levar's popularity is waning among regular voters. He avoided a runoff by just 817 votes. Both Boyke and Klocek will try again in 2011. The rap against Boyke was that he was Levar's aide for 6 years and then resigned to run against him, so he was castigated for ingratitude by Levar and for complicity in the ward's problems by Klocek and Bank. By 2011 Boyke's past will be forgotten. Klocek's task is to appeal to the ward's Polish-American voters and develop enough credibility so as not to be isolated as the "Polish lady."

Levar's selection as Democratic ward committeeman on April 30 by the party precinct captains, replacing the late Tom Lyons, makes it more likely than not that he will run again in 2011. Rumors abound that he wants to give the job to his son, Pat Jr. According to insiders, Levar got the party post only by promising to remain as alderman. But Levar looks beatable in 2011, especially if turnout is 15,000 or more.

50th Ward (West Rogers Park): Incumbent Berny Stone won, narrowly, because he played the race card: He portrayed the contest as Jews versus "people of color," and Jewish voters responded.

Naisy Dolar, a Filipino, lacked the money, manpower and campaign acumen to compete, and she lost by just 661 votes, with 47.1 percent of the votes cast in a turnout of 11,269. Stone had 5,059 votes (48.3 percent of the total) on Feb. 27, in a turnout of 10,469. He increased his vote by 906 (to 5,965) in the runoff, primarily by turning out more Jewish voters. Of the 5,410 anti-Stone votes on Feb. 27, almost 95 percent (5,304) went to Dolar in the runoff.

In 2003 Stone got 5,755 votes (76 percent of the total) in a turnout of 7,558. He got about the same vote in 2007 as in 2003, but the opposition vote tripled. Dolar definitely is running in 2011, as is Greg Brewer, who finished with 1,906 votes (18.2 percent) in the Feb. 27 primary. In 4 more years, "people of color" -- Asians, Arabs, Muslims, Hispanics -- will have moved from being a population majority into being a voting majority, and Stone, age 79, won't be running.

49th Ward (Rogers Park): When a well known, outspoken, supposedly "independent" 16-year alderman squeaks to victory by 247 votes, getting just 50.9 percent of the votes cast, it's hospice time. The condition is terminal, so bring on the morphine and plan the funeral.

Joe Moore postures as an anti-Daley independent and eagerly takes obligatory liberal stances: against the Iraq war, for banning foi gras and patronage hiring, and for the "big box" living wage ordinance. But chaos reigns in his ward: Crime, relentless condominium conversions (more than 6,000 apartments converted in the past 5 years) and poor city services have created a deep pool of hostility toward Moore.

Don Gordon, a retired banker who has lived in the ward for 30 years but who never was politically active, built an impressive anti-Moore coalition, composed of home owners who perceive Moore as being in the pocket of condo developers and disgruntled new condo buyers who thought Rogers Park would be the next Lincoln Park. Moore's vote trajectory is in a stall, but not yet a free fall, due to the transient nature of the ward and the nonparticipation of new residents.

Moore raised $507,213 in the past 2 years, with half from developers who are engaged in condo conversions. He may be a "reformer" in citywide politics, but he's seen as part of the problem in the 49th Ward: ineffectual, compromised and inattentive. The anger level is rising, and it eventually will be Moore's demise.

In 2003 Moore was re-elected with a tepid 54.7 percent of the vote, getting 3,693 votes in a turnout of 6,746. In a ward with 66,000 residents and 22,435 registered voters, his vote was just 5.5 percent of the population and just 16.4 percent of the registration. In 1999 he won with 4,122 votes, down from 4,368 in 1995 and 5,842 in 1991. Compared to 2003, Moore got 36 fewer votes on Feb. 27, but he managed to increase his vote by 205 from the municipal election to April 17. Gordon got 2,162 votes (30.2 percent of the total) on Feb. 27 in a turnout of 7,414 and in a field of four candidates. He got 3,724 votes in the runoff, with a turnout of 7,586, meaning that virtually all the Feb. 27 anti-Moore vote (3,757) went to him.

Gordon doesn't want to run in 2011. He wants to run next week. He has filed a lawsuit alleging that Moore's workers procured fraudulent votes from vacant lots and nursing homes and asking for a rerun of the election. It won't happen.

As Gordon looks toward the next election, he must concoct a tripartite strategy: appeal to the condo buyers, who are convinced that Rogers Park is a slum and getting worse, appeal to the ward's less affluent renters, who are convinced that the ward is gentrifying, that housing is getting too expensive and that they're being pushed out, and appeal to home owners, who feel that condo conversion is out of control. Alternatively, he can just let Humpty Dumpty Moore fall off the wall.

46th Ward (Uptown): Chicago's very own Marxist, Alderman Helen Shiller, will soon fall victim to the fallacy of Karl Marx's philosophy, namely, that capitalism will wither, greed will be extinguished, and all will have according to their needs and give according to their ability.

Shiller's political base is the "have nots," who don't want to labor and who have rapacious needs, plus those "haves," primarily older Jewish and gay voters, whose "guilt" impels them to vote for Shiller. Her message: If you don't vote for me, you betray your race, class or sexual orientation.

The anti-Shiller base is the "haves," tired of paying taxes to support the underclass and who are building and buying expensive new condos or townhomes or renovating dilapidated housing.

On Feb. 27 the "have nots" won again, but only after a nasty campaign in which Shiller demonized her foe, social worker James Cappleman, as an opponent of affordable housing and job training and as a closet Republican. Her mailings hit "James and his Klan." She won by just 701 votes, with 53.1 percent of the votes cast, in a turnout of 10,967.

Cappleman, who is openly gay and who calls himself a liberal, was the recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King Humanitarian Award from the University of Chicago, and he cofounded a homeless shelter for people with HIV. But, in the zany politics of the 46th Ward, that makes him, in comparison to Shiller, a conservative.

"I lost because of her lies and intimidation," said Cappleman, who is running again in 2011. "She tells people they will lose their housing if they don't vote for her. She manipulates nursing home voters. She has no ethics."

As the ward gentrifies, Shiller's "have not" base -- the renters, the homeless, the public housing residents -- withers. Even though Shiller voted against the living wage ordinance, Moore intervened to make sure she was not targeted by the unions. Her vote was down by 406 from 2003. She got 6,240 votes in 2003, 6,272 in the 1999 runoff, 5,988 in 1995, 8,613 in the 1991 runoff, and 9,751 in the 1987 runoff, when she first won.

Cappleman won't be the only anti-Shiller candidate in 2011. The "haves" are approaching a voting majority, and Shiller, like Marxism, will soon be history.