The last two runners on the track in the most grueling - and expensive - marathon in Philadelphia political history still had enough steam to sprint neck-and-neck to the finish line yesterday.

Democrat John Street and Republican Sam Katz crisscrossed the city yesterday, riding subways, shaking hundreds of hands and holding last-minute rallies in a mayoral race that may be won today by a handful of votes.

So intense was the last-minute campaigning that Katz and Street at one point found themselves working the same crowd only a few feet apart, and Street and his No. 1 supporter Mayor Rendell posed for pictures with his so-called "Polaroid posse" at 15th and Market, when Katz arrived on an el tour of the city.

Street field commander Mannwell Glenn, who works the crowd with a bullhorn at the events, took quick advantage of the occasion. "Look, even Sam Katz wants take a Polaroid with John Street," Glenn chided. "Can you believe it?"

In the most expensive mayor's race in Philadelphia history, almost anything would be believable.

This morning, polls open at 7 a.m. for the grand finale of the race to succeed Rendell, which started in earnest more than two years ago and involved six major party candidates who spent more than $25 million in their efforts to run America's fifth-largest city.

Public opinion surveys for the last six weeks have shown that Katz - a financial consultant seeking to become the Philadelphia's first Republican mayor in nearly a half-century, and Street, the former City Council president, have been locked in a dead heat. John McDermott of the Constitutional Party also is on the ballot.

Over the last several days, it has been impossible to turn on a TV set or a radio without hearing a commercial for Street or Katz, each spending $1 million on ads in the final week.

Today, the focus turns to large-scale field operations assembled by both campaigns in an effort to get their supporters out to the polls.

Experts say they would be surprised if much more than half of Philadelphia's 988,000 registered voters show up at the polls today, despite the closeness of the election and intense media coverage. Little more than 40 percent of registered Democrats turned out for a hotly contested five-way primary in May.

Complicating matters is the weather. Forecasts for today called for periods of rain and wind, which would likely hold down turnout. It's not clear if either man would benefit.

Whoever wins after the polls close at 8 p.m., it has been a long, strange trip for Philadelphia and its voters.

This fall, Street and Katz appeared together in more than a dozen forums and debates, including several that were televised, but didn't differ dramatically on the issues. Both favored lowering taxes and getting more money for the city's beleaguered schools, but offered different approaches and styles.

Their low-key, slightly nerdy approach to politics and ideological alikeness may have helped to make race a major factor, even as neither candidate made racial appeals of any kind. Polls showed that most white - even white Democrats - leaning to Katz and most blacks likely to support Street.

The final campaigning was both frenetic and light-hearted. Katz spent part of yesterday morning and afternoon campaigning for votes in Center City, and at one point found the perfect spot to shake people's hands - the bottom of an escalator in the Shops at Liberty Place.

It was lunch hour, and 40 to 50 people a minute were coming down the escalator from the second-floor court. An endless stream of potential voters, all with nowhere to go but right into his outstretched hand.

Katz didn't get them all, but he got most. Many said to him, "Good luck tomorrow, Sam."

Katz admitted it made him a little dizzy, all these people coming at him, but he kept at it for about 10 minutes before getting on the "up" escalator to get some lunch.

His wife, Connie, who had been at his side shaking hands as well, was a little reluctant to leave such a prime location.

"They can't get away from you," she laughed. "I don't know that I want to leave that spot."

On his last day of campaigning, Street returned to the basics of his campaign. He worked the streets with his Polaroid Posse, which has taken some 150,000 photographs, shaking hands at transit stops and getting a late morning and late night boost from Rendell at the shift change at the 30th Street Station post office.

And like the marathon runner that he is, Street showed boundless energy, at one point jumping through the window of his parked campaign trolley to the Broad Street curb five feet below to hug and photograph two women.

For much of the afternoon, Street was in the open-air trolley with a caravan of campaign vehicles in tow, winding through the streets of his former Council district in North Philadelphia.

Through the day, Street maintained that the election will not be particularly close, thanks to the enormous get-out-the-vote effort that will be put in play today. Phone banks will be used to identify voters and 100 vans are available to take voters to polling places, a staffer noted.

Pedestrians waved to him, gave him the thumbs up and he returned the favor with a broad smile and plenty of waves.

At his only formal campaign stop of the day, Street spoke to a Veterans group outside the new Veterans Multi-Service Center on North 4th Street. With him were Rendell, District Attorney Lynne Abraham, state Auditor General Robert Casey Jr. and a group of labor leaders.

In a tub-thumping speech, Rendell told the veterans that his administration could not have achieved what it did without Street.

"Some people don't want to give this man the credit for doing those things. Some people forget where we were," Rendell said.

Staff writers Dave Davies and Scott Flander contributed to this report