Tom Brown, Bryan Weaver and Alan Page. Photo by d. scruggs.

With less than a month left to go until the April 26 At-Large Special Election, the nine candidates vying for the seat vacated by D.C. Council Chair Kwame Brown are struggling to win over what is likely to be a small number of voters that will decide the contest.

Over the last two weeks, momentum has been swinging back and forth between Vincent Orange and Interim Councilmember Sekou Biddle. After Orange announced a massive $191,000 campaign finance haul and polled far ahead of his competition, Biddle roared back to life with key endorsements from Councilmember David Catania (I-At Large), Councilmember Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) and the Current newspapers, which deliver to vote-rich Ward 3.

But despite their money and organizational firepower, both Orange and Biddle have seem committed competition from former Ward 1 Council candidate Bryan Weaver, Republican Patrick Mara and former Adrian Fenty campaign staffer Josh Lopez. Today, Weaver unveiled a campaign ad modeled on the popular YouTube videos he produced during his 2010 challenge of Councilmember Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), further driving home his message that he’s the only candidate that can truly clean up city government. (His newest video even references an old video and drops not-so-subtle hints to Brown’s fully-loaded SUV scandal and Biddle’s challenges of his nominating petitions.)

In the meantime, Mara has continued shoring up his bases amongst the city’s approximately 30,000 Republican voters and business community, while Lopez has remained on the campaign trail day in and day out, sharpening his lines against his competitors and knocking on more doors than anyone else.

Alan Page, Dorothy Douglas, Tom Brown and Arkan Haile have remained active in the campaign, though they have struggled to raise money and poll at the level of Orange, Biddle, Weaver, Mara, and Lopez.

As the campaign enters its final three weeks, it’ll be interesting to see if the candidates go negative and how they’ll refine their pitches in light of the 2012 budget unveiled by Mayor Vince Gray last Friday. Lopez, Weaver and Page have strongly defended increasing taxes on the city’s highest earners (which Gray’s budget does, though without a sunset clause that Lopez has pushed for), while Orange and Mara have come out in favor of aggressive spending cuts. Biddle flip-flopped on the tax issue in February, but came out against tax hikes in a statement released late last week: “New taxes should be a last resort, not a starting point for the budget discussion,” the statement read. “I believe additional savings can be identified in the Mayor’s proposed budget to offset some of the proposed cuts to human services.”

Early voting and in-person absentee voting starts April 11 at the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics in Judiciary Square. If you haven’t had a chance to see the candidates in action, Page and Orange have updated forum schedules that are worth a look. (Forums in Lamond-Riggs and Chevy Chase are scheduled for tonight.)

And remember — special elections tend to be low turnout affairs. You may often hear that your vote counts, but it will count even more in a hotly-contested election that may see the winner claim only a few thousand votes.