The bill seemed like a clear solution.

Annapolis public housing residents wanted suspected drug dealers off their sidewalks. But police officers had no jurisdiction over the sidewalks, which are the property of the Annapolis Housing Authority.

So Alderman Herbert H. McMillan studied the loitering laws of big cities such as Chicago and Baltimore, and decided Annapolis could use an ordinance allowing police to ask suspected drug dealers on public housing sidewalks to move along.

But what the first-term alderman pitched as a simple fix has plunged him deep into the quagmire of racial tensions in America.

Annapolis' black leaders, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union have blasted the bill, arguing that police officers could use it to harass all African-Americans on street corners.

Last week, the Supreme Court struck down a similar bill, one aimed at gang members in Chicago.

McMillan's bill has generated such a hostile response in the state capital that it may even cost him his job.

Opponents said they have 800 signatures, 100 more than they need to start a recall process.

The 41-year-old accidental alderman, who had never seriously considered a life in politics until days before he ran two years ago, has rapidly learned that representing Ward 5 -- one of only two majority-black wards in Annapolis -- is a highly nuanced job where his perceived white perspective has become an issue.

"As they say, 'A warship is safe in the harbor, but that's not what warships were built for,' " said McMillan, who has dug in for the fight. "Maybe [my opponents] thought I would come in and sit around and try not to stir things up for four years. But I won't avoid a tough issue; I want to change some things."

McMillan argued that police officers cannot use this law to harass African-Americans at random because it specifies characteristics of "drug activity" to look for before approaching a loiterer to move along.

But Ruby Blakeney, a Ward 5 resident who heads the committee that is gathering ouster signatures, joined the ACLU and NAACP last week to call for the bill's recall after the Supreme Court decision.

Blakeney said she sees the "loitering while black" bill as the last straw in a series of anti-black actions on McMillan's part. She noted his attempts to cut funding for Grandma's House, a public-housing after-school program, and for Annapolis' Kunta Kinte Festival.

"Everything he has done in the past goes against these people that he is supposed to represent," said Blakeney, a Kunta Kinte Festival board member. "That is a problem."

McMillan's defenders see an altogether different person.

"He's a good guy who believes all neighborhoods regardless of socioeconomics should be able to enjoy a safe environment just like the most affluent neighborhoods," said Antonio Brown, a Neighborhood Watch block captain in Ward 5 and an African-American. "He seems very willing to learn and listen to people. People should give him a chance."

Family influence

The alderman is not one to waffle on what he believes to be right. He traces that aspect of his personality to his deeply religious Catholic family who raised him in Knoxville, Tenn.

"I've never been a follower," he said. "I've never been afraid to stand out."

McMillan moved to Annapolis in 1976 to attend the Naval Academy. After graduation, he was stationed on the USS Steinaker in Baltimore for more than a year, then attended flight school in Pensacola, Fla. In the late 1980s, he moved back to Annapolis to be an admissions officer at his alma mater. He joined American Airlines as a pilot in 1991.

Eloquent, outspoken and conservatively dressed, McMillan exudes an image of having been groomed for politics. But until two years ago, the husband and father -- two boys and two girls, ages 3 to 16 -- was content being a member of the PTA and the Hunt Meadow Homeowners Association board.

But then came a telephone call in 1997, mere days before the deadline for declaring candidacy for the Annapolis city council election in September.

Ward 5 was mired in uncertainty over who would be its next representative. Carl O. Snowden, a popular black Democrat who was outspoken on issues affecting the African-American community, had stepped down after three terms to run -- unsuccessfully -- for mayor.

Democratic ward

Race has always been an issue in Ward 5, one of two majority-black wards created in the 1980s so African-Americans would have political representation, and the Democrats -- who make up 70 percent of Ward 5 -- were pushing city police officer George Kelley, who is black.

On the Republican end, Sara White, the Ward 5 representative on the Republican City Central Committee for Annapolis, talked to neighborhood association leaders and called McMillan.

"Like most people, I would read the paper and complain about things," McMillan said. "I would think that, if I was there, I would do this or that differently. I thought this was something I should do."

So he filed for candidacy and knocked on doors to find out what the constituents cared about. When crime and loitering surfaced as issues, he made those his platform. And he scored a surprise win, squeaking by with 392 votes to Kelley's 358.

But McMillan's election didn't happen without at least one reference to his race.

He and his predecessor made local headlines less than two weeks before election day when Snowden chastised the Republican Party for not finding a black candidate to run.

McMillan cried race baiting, and hasn't forgotten the incident, especially since Snowden was at the protest meeting where the idea to oust the alderman first came up.

He expressed bitterness that his most vocal opponents -- including Blakeney -- are people who have long supported or worked with Snowden.

In a fund-raising letter McMillan mailed to 1,100 Republicans last week, he pinned the recall election effort on "partisan extremists, led by Carl Snowden."

"Carl Snowden likes to talk about diversity, and he talks about diversity of color," McMillan said. "But the more important diversity is diversity of thought. Now [my opponents are] trying to get rid of someone because they're bringing forward an idea they don't like? I find it ironic that people who claim to be tolerant, who say that tolerance is so important are so intolerant when one person had a different idea."

But Snowden, now a government relations liaison for the county administration, said he attended the meeting as an individual and did not instigate or voice support for McMillan's ouster.

"It's not appropriate for me to comment on Mr. McMillan's allegations," Snowden said. "He has my best wishes for his future endeavors."

Vocal leaders

Other county leaders have been more vocal.

Lewis Bracy, spokesman for the Maryland Forum of African American Leaders, said: "I don't want to call the man an outright racist, but I think he comes out of the good ol' boy mentality. He calls himself a Newt Gingrich Republican, and anyone who embraces Rush Limbaugh or Newt Gingrich are embracing conservative policies that have negative implications for African-Americans. They're racist policies."

McMillan said he has never likened himself to Gingrich, the former House speaker.

"It's spin," he said. "That's like the oldest trick in the book. Gingrich is the person that everyone loves to hate. I've called myself a Reagan Republican, and I am."

He defended the stands Blakeney said were anti-black.

He said he tried to cut funding for Grandma's House because it is underutilized and is working on starting a Head Start program in Robinwood as a better alternative. He said he not only suggested cutting funding for the Kunta Kinte Festival, but also for First Night Annapolis, "a predominantly white festival."

The debate has gotten so heated that Alderman Cynthia A. Carter, a Ward 6 Democrat who sits next to McMillan during City Hall meetings, has started writing letters and speaking out against her council chamber colleague.

"I feel strongly about this," said Carter, who is African-American. "Hanging out on the sidewalk or sitting on the front steps it's just a way of life for us. We congregate on sidewalks. We've been doing it for years. This bill gives me a bad feeling in my stomach."

Alderman Louise Hammond, a Ward 1 Democrat who is white, questioned the movement to oust McMillan.

"I would think that people would want to recall someone who isn't doing anything and isn't taking his responsibilities seriously rather than go after someone who has taken his job and responsibilities seriously," Hammond said.

McMillan also has support from some black leaders, such as Annapolis Housing Authority director Patricia Croslan and Lt. Robert E. Beans, Annapolis Police crime prevention coordinator, who supported the bill initially but cannot comment on it now. Police Chief Joseph Johnson said the department is taking "no position."

Brown, the Neighborhood Watch block captain in Ward 5's Bywater community, said he wants the bill to pass.

Neighborhood Watch leaders -- a diverse group that is about 50 percent African-American -- voted unanimously last week to support the bill.

"I'm against them trying to get him out of office," Brown said. "It's crazy. I don't believe he's a racist. He did not sit in his living room and think, 'I'm going to rid the city of all the black males standing on corners.' "

Blakeney said opponents are giving McMillan a chance.

They will protest at the bill's public hearing Monday but won't yet submit the recall signatures to the city council, she said.

"Mr. McMillan is the one calling the shots," Blakeney said. "If he withdraws the bill, then we will decide where we want to go with this.

"It's not a threat or anything."

Sitting in his spacious house in the Hunt Meadow community last week, separated from his ward's public housing neighborhoods by acres of woods, McMillan said he has nothing to gain personally from this bill.

"Look out my window," he said, gazing out at sidewalks more likely to be occupied by children on bicycles than suspected drug dealers. "Do I need this law? I don't need this law. But a lot of residents in my ward do, and I represent them. I'm not going to back down."

Public hearing

A public hearing on Alderman Herbert H. McMillan's bill will take place at 7 p.m. Monday at Annapolis City Hall.

The bill targets loitering about or using a place for the purpose of engaging in drug-related activity. It redefines public space to include private property that the general public has access to, such as sidewalks of public housing communities, grocery store parking lots or playgrounds. This gives police officers power to enforce loitering laws in these areas.

To determine whether someone is loitering for the purpose of drug-related activity, police officers can use these criteria under the bill:

* If a person is repeatedly engaging in conversations with drivers or passengers of vehicles, distributing small objects to people and receiving money in exchange for those objects, concealing small objects, or engaging in a pattern of any other conduct that police officers associate with illegal distribution or possession of drugs.

* If police have reliable information that a person routinely distributes illegal drugs or is engaging in illegal drug activity.

If the loiterer has been convicted of drug possession or distribution.