Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s choice to become Chicago’s new health commissioner hit a roadblock Thursday put up by aldermen demanding the reopening of six mental health clinics famously closed by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Sensing defeat of the mayor’s nomination of Dr. Allison Arwady, Lightfoot’s chief of staff Maurice Classen and legislative aide Manny Perez came down to the City Council chambers to button-hole individual aldermen and try and convince them to change their minds.

When it didn’t work, Human Relations and Health Committee Chairman Roderick Sawyer (6th) agreed to table Arwady’s nomination for a later date. An aide hustled Arwady out of the council chambers and toward the elevators on the second floor of City Hall.

The still-acting commissioner refused to answer questions from reporters about her stalled nomination and the latest sign of discontent from aldermen.

For more than three hours, Arwady was hammered with questions from aldermen demanding to know whether Lightfoot planned to honor her campaign promise to reopen the clinics.

Arwady acknowledged 200,000 Chicagoans need mental health care and aren’t getting it. But she argued that reopening the shuttered city clinics is not the answer because the five city clinics that remain are not operating at capacity.

“We need to expand the ability of people to get mental health services in wards … where there may not be appropriate services. [But], I don’t think CDPH clinics themselves are the answer to that,” Arwady said.

Arwady noted that Emanuel had no choice but to consolidate the city’s 12 mental health clinics after Chicago lost 90 percent of the $8 million in annual state funding used to support those facilities.

“If I thought that those clinics were providing the bulk of the mental health care even back then — if I saw that our current clinics were busting at the gills and we weren’t able to get people into our mental health clinics, then I might have a different opinion,” she said.

The answer infuriated aldermen who campaigned on a promise to re-open the shuttered city clinics and firmly believed that Lightfoot would honor her campaign promise to do the same.

Lightfoot has since been confronted by an $838 million shortfall that makes honoring that campaign promise more difficult. Some mental health experts also have argued the problem is more complicated than reopening city clinics.

On Thursday, Arwady said Chicagoans who don’t obtain the mental health care they need either: didn’t know where to get it; didn’t know how to pay for it; thought they couldn’t afford it; thought their insurance wouldn’t cover it; or, were determined to avoid the stigma.

Arwady said Lightfoot has a plan to confront the mental health crisis, but she’s not in a position to share it. It’s “still in the final stages of figuring out the budget related to it,” she said.

The acting commissioner hinted strongly that the mayor’s plan may not involve re-opening the shuttered city clinics.

“Nothing is off the table. I am most interested in making sure the clinics we do have get investments they need and are operating at capacity,” the acting commissioner said.

Arwady’s response did not sit well with aldermen that included members of Lightfoot’s City Council leadership team.

“Closing mental health clinics was devastating. My neighborhood has zero mental health clinics,” said Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza (10th), Lightfoot’s handpicked chairman of the City Council’s Committee on Workforce Development.

“How can you say closing mental health clinics was the right decision when you yourself said there are 200,000 people in Chicago who needed mental health service and didn’t get it?”

Ald. Maria Hadden (49th) added, “Loss of those mental health clinics was a huge blow. … The impact of the loss of that care is still being felt and I haven’t seen a plan yet.”

Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th) noted that, in the run-up to the 2019 aldermanic election, a task force was formed take the first step to re-open the shuttered clinics.

“To bring forward... a nominee who cannot answer basic questions about what the plan is was a mistake,” Ramirez-Rosa said.

“We want to have a conversation about what the plan is to re-open the clinics. Until that time, we’re not prepared to vote to confirm the nomination.”

Sawyer was asked whether the “honeymoon is over” for Lightfoot—at least with the City Council.

“Honeymoon? It’s hard to say. ... Is the learning curve high? Absolutely, it is. For a new administration, it always is in the first couple of months.”