With the preliminary election behind them, candidates are focusing on the general campaign. What has been a sleepy at-large city council race will be picking up in earnest as the four incumbents defend their seats against four challengers.

Since there are only eight candidates seeking the four available at-large seats, there was no balloting in the preliminary election on Tuesday. City Council president Michelle Wu, Michael Flaherty, Ayanna Pressley, and Annissa Essaibi-George are campaigning to hold onto their posts on Nov. 7.

The challengers are Domingos DaRosa, of Hyde Park; former state representative and perennial candidate Althea Garrison; William A. King, of Dorchester; and Pat Payaso, of Roxbury. Payaso, the Boston Herald reported, is the new legal name of Kevin McCrea, a Boston developer and former mayoral candidate who is campaigning in the guise of a clown.

Two of the four at-large councillors are Dorchester women, the reliable ticket-topper Pressley and relative newcomer Essaibi-George. First elected in 2009, Pressley has pulled off the highest vote count in her last three at-large races. She was the first person of color and the first woman in 30 years to top the ticket. “I’ve seen it as a mandate,” she told the Reporter in a phone interview Tuesday. “I found it humbling and very emboldening.”

Her margins of victory underscore that her approach to governance has been the right one, Pressley said. She has been a tireless advocate for women and girls and those in poverty, speaking out against violence and in support of better trauma programming, bringing liquor licenses to underserved communities, and otherwise bolstering local businesses. “I hope what people have seen is an evolution,” she said.

Pressley is a pro at the two-year campaign cycle at this point, with nearly $77,000 in her campaign account, according to financial filings. On Tuesday, she said her team has organized phone banks, fundraisers, sent out her first piece of campaign literature for their cycle, while she has been doing various gatherings and neighborhood listening sessions. To those who are curious about her ambitions, Pressley says she is focused on her role as a councillor for the entire city.

“My governing style and approach is not to be super parochial,” she said. Although “very proud to be DBC, Dorchester By Choice,” and raising her family in the neighborhood, “I really made it a point early on to have an agenda that is neighborhood transcendent, supporting the intentional building of healthier communities thoughtfully, through policy, and breaking cycles of poverty.”

Until Wu was elected to the council in 2013, “I was a sorority of one for a good while there,” Pressley said. “It has been something. We’ve made great strides in gender and racial parity in government and I think it’s been strengthened by it.” One of those strides was the election in 2015 of Andrea Campbell in District 4 and Essaibi-George to her at-large seat, bringing the number of women to a new high — four.

Essaibi-George was the lone at-large challenger in 2015, and she unseated longtime incumbent Steve Murphy, now the Register of Deeds for Suffolk County. She has brought her background as a mother of four and local business owner to the council.

“I think I have a healthy anxiety about my first reelection,” she said in a phone interview on Tuesday as she scooted between polling locations. “As the last one on, there is certainly this fear that I could be in some sort of jeopardy. But I feel confident in my reputation, for the work I have done.”

She highlights her work on the most recent city budget, which included $1.2 million dedicated for student homelessness, a cause that Essaibi-George has championed since first running for the seat. Noting that Massachusetts is one of the states hit the hardest by the opioid epidemic, Essaibi-George says the council needs to continue to work on the crisis from a “big picture” perspective.

She has only been in office for 20 months, she said, and “there’s so much work ahead.” Her volunteers were out in force on Tuesday, wearing the councillor’s signature Hot Lips pink clothing and keeping an eye on turnout, which will be higher in the November final. “My success in this election will be an indicator of whether I’ve delivered on what I campaigned on in 2015,” she said. “I hope that the voters rehire me, reelect me with added confidence.”

If reelected, she plans to continue advancing later times for Boston public school students and working to address gentrification’s impact on small business as well as on home prices. Essaibi-George owns Stitch House on Dorchester Avenue and lives in the Polish Triangle.

“For me, the perspective that I bring to the council as a female, as a parent of four kids, experiencing the city as a mom and woman has been incredibly invaluable,” she said. Even more valuable, she said, “has been as a teacher, and a business owner, and a parent. They certainly have helped me be a good governor.”

Now defending her post against a populated field, Essaibi-George said she's heartened by the competition if they pursue the councillorship sincerely and diligently.

“It’s great that we have challengers,” she said, “and as a former challenger, I think it keeps those of us in elected office fully engaged. Boston is “an incredible city; there are awesome things happening in the city, but we also have significant changes… That work continues, and it can only continue, and we can only push forward with that work if we have serious people in the race.”