It is one of those strange, vague Baltimore summer days that wants to do everything at once. Raindrops are falling, even as rays of sunlight crack the sky, and a second wave of scudding black clouds gathers on the horizon.
Inside a plain brick building on 25th Street, Carl Stokes also is promising to do everything at once, dangling a vision of Baltimore as mouth-watering as the Danish pastries served at this regular meeting of the 25th Street Area Business Owners Association.
Just listen to him: The Baltimore of the next four years will be safer, cleaner, more efficient and more responsive. Every child will be in an after-school program, playing an instrument or taking lessons. Ballet, maybe art. Ministers will go door-to-door, performing bed checks at the homes of at-risk youths. The homicide rate will be halved, by using the so-called "Boston model."
"On the cusp" neighborhoods will be revitalized, six to 10 at a time. New neighborhoods will be built from the ground up, using models that include the kind of features for which people usually go to the suburbs -- cul de sacs and courtyards and community playgrounds.
And -- mirabile dictu -- the city will be responsive when citizens call to complain. The switchboard operator will be an intake person, someone who can solve your problem, not just pass the buck to a bureaucrat. Forty-eight hours later, 72 at the most, a city worker will call back and ask if you received the help you needed.
It's enough to make one wonder: What's exactly in that Danish?
"When you say that to me, I think you're a Baltimorean," Stokes will say later, good-naturedly and astutely, when a reporter expresses skepticism. "Because Baltimoreans tend to think things can't be done. If you'd traveled to New York, or Boston, you would know these things can be done, they have been done."
In this warm and friendly crowd, however, there is no skepticism, only hunger. It's such a juicy, tempting vision, the questions feel like the kind of softballs lobbed at that rotisserie salesman on cable, the one who really likes impaling that chicken.
What are you going to do about crime? More police on the street, Stokes says, fewer in cars. (This has nothing to do with the Boston model, but never mind.) What about the blocks of boarded-up houses? Some neighborhoods cannot be saved, Stokes says candidly, the first time he admits there's anything that can't be done.
But even here, it's only a matter of time before The Question comes up. Why did you lie about having a college degree, asks a woman, who hastens to assure him she will vote for him anyway. But she doesn't know what to say to her friends when they ask about this lapse.
Now, technically, Stokes didn't lie: His campaign literature contained an error, he let it go. He attended Loyola College as an English major, but he left two years short of graduation to go into business.
It's not the first time Stokes has been asked The Question, and it probably won't be the last. He is clearly prepared for it. He speaks slowly and carefully, trying to turn what has been one of his campaign's biggest liabilities into an asset.
"I made a mistake, and I must take responsibility," he says. "It's a reflection of how I will govern. There will be times as the mayor of the city, when we will make mistakes -- I will make mistakes. We have to acknowledge them, not duck, not pour good money after bad, say we're sorry.
"And then we need to move on."
Jimmy's Restaurant, 9 a.m.
Stokes, 49, has been moving on, and just plain moving, longer than anyone else in this mayor's race. He declared his candidacy on Dec. 8, 1998, before Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke had announced his intention not to run again.
Since then, he has tried to honor every invitation, attend every event, meet with every group that wants him.
"He wants to do everything," says Sam Redd, a friend and aide who has been along for every Stokes' campaign since his first unsuccessful bid for City Council in 1983.
The campaign's spokeswoman, Kelley Ray, says they sometimes catch Stokes sneaking a quick visit to events they've told him he's just too booked to attend.
This debate at Jimmy's restaurant is on the official schedule for the day, although Stokes' two closest rivals for the Democratic nomination, City Council President Lawrence A. Bell III and Councilman Martin J. O'Malley, declined to attend.
Stokes doesn't mind, nor does it seem to bother him that only two voters stop by the table, or that one of his questioners is Roberto Marsili, a candidate for the Republican nomination. He's feeling expansive, predicting -- quite rightly, as it turns out -- that the next poll will show him out front, with Bell losing support.
Just a few weeks ago, Stokes' campaign looked to be in a tailspin, wounded not only by the Loyola College revelations, but by a similarly muddy story about his suspended driver's license.
But he came back, thanks in part to a spate of endorsements. He keeps coming back. They could call you the resurrectionist, a reporter suggests. "That wouldn't be my word," says Stokes, wincing slightly, a Catholic who attended parochial schools throughout his East Baltimore youth and still attends St. Francis Xavier church.
He grew up in the Latrobe projects, the oldest of four children. The after-school programs he envisions for today's children are something he never knew himself. "I would have liked to play ball," he says a little wistfully. On scholarship at Loyola High School, he had to work at part-time jobs to pay for extras.
"But I don't want it to sound like a hard-luck story," he says more than once. Why not? After all, hard-luck stories are a time-honored political tradition.
"Because I had a good life, no different than anyone else's."
11 a.m., Pearleaf Court
Another day, another mayoral forum, this one with the resident advisory board at this East Side housing project. It seems that every special-interest group, every neighborhood association, wants to meet with the 20-plus mayoral candidates. The forums, while considered important, can be an exercise in frustration for all the candidates, who are reduced to sound bites by the very format that seeks to inform voters.
Few seem to chafe more under the rigorous time limits than Stokes. He has so much to say, so much to promise. Yet he has a manner of speaking that suggests someone who has overcome a speech impediment -- a tendency to stop, to pause for several seconds, before he pushes out the next word. But, no, he's never had a stutter or a stammer, Stokes says. He's just very careful about what he says, and how he says it.
In eight years at City Council, he was known sometimes as the "quiet councilman," although certain issues sparked his passions. He was credited with a redistricting plan that gave the city five majority-black districts. And he was vehement in his criticism of EAI, the private company that was awarded a contract to run several city schools.
After two terms on the council -- and a lopsided loss in the state Senate race -- Stokes decided to run for City Council president in 1995. In the primary, he came in fourth in a five-person field, almost 17,000 votes behind Bell, the eventual winner. He was appointed to the city's new school board in 1997, serving all of 18 months before he left.
This forum, which has attracted fewer than half of the mayoral candidates, is running long, and there's yet another forum in Towson this afternoon. Stokes will have to skip the Mount Street Senior Center's picnic in order to stay on schedule, but he can't bear to miss the event. He tells Sam Redd that they'll have to swing by, at least for a few minutes, before heading out to to the next event.
This is when Redd observes, with a laugh and a sigh: "He wants to do everything."
4: 30 p.m., finance office, Brody's Trucking, Wilkens and Bentalou
In 1995, Stokes' campaign simply ran out of money. He vows this won't happen again, but the mid-August campaign reports showed him with only $87,000 dollars on hand, significantly less than Bell and O'Malley have. He's now working the phones in a space provided by the trucking firm, with the help of Sam and one other aide. The Stokes campaign is a lean one.
This is where endorsements can be converted into a harder currency. While it's unclear how much endorsements help at the polls, Stokes' lion's share has conferred a much-needed legitimacy on his campaign. His campaign predicts it will be able to raise $100,000 in the next reporting period.
Taking a break from fund-raising calls, Stokes is asked if he will concede there's a peripatetic nature to his resume, a sense of someone who moves on, quickly and often -- in his professional life and his personal one.
Stokes prefers to say he succeeds at one thing, then looks for the next challenge. He left Loyola, he says, to take advantage of a business opportunity. He often refers to himself as a successful businessman, although his retail clothing business ultimately had to be closed because of money problems.
Doesn't that make the venture a failure, he is asked.
"It was successful for five years, very successful," he replies. "In fact, people still remember it."
6 p.m., Micah's, Reisterstown Road
The schedule has Stokes "waving" at Hilton and Gwynn's Falls Parkway, a time-honored tradition in local politics. It's almost as efficient as television and a whole lot cheaper -- all you need is a corner and a sign.
But the weather is suddenly refusing to cooperate. Rain, which has held off all day despite the overcast skies, begins to fall the minute he and Sam pull up to the appointed spot. Stokes rolls with it, decides to run a quick errand -- dropping his shirts off at a West Side laundry -- then grab a quick bite.
As he works the line at the popular Northwest Baltimore restaurant, it becomes evident that people know the Stokes name, but they don't always know his face. There is a split-second, when he approaches people, when they look nervous, as if being hit up by a salesman. But their expressions warm when they realize who Stokes is.
"How are you doing, Mr. Stokes?" one young man asks, prompting his dining companion to look up from his plate. "Hey, Mr. Stokes," the friend then calls out, but he's yelling at Redd.
7 p.m., Vera Hall's home, Northwest Baltimore
Baltimore is full of hidden pockets, neighborhoods that even natives might not be able to find. Former City Councilwoman Vera Hall lives in such a place, in a modern house on a dead-end street tucked above the Gwynns Falls.
Tonight, she is the hostess for what is billed as a "community conversation," one of an estimated 100-plus Stokes has held in the past year. The goal was to have at least 99, he said, but he just kept going.
Hall, who ran against Stokes in 1995 for City Council president, has joined the long list of those who have endorsed him in the mayor's race. State Sen. Clarence Blount, another Stokes backer and the Maryland Senate majority leader, also is in attendance.
It's a two-man race at this point, she says, between Stokes and O'Malley. "People have made up their mind about Lawrence Bell," she says, implying that those voters who have turned their back on Bell are now up for grabs. (The Bell campaign also likes to say it's a two-man race, although it doesn't agree on who is still in the running.)
Stokes takes center stage, spinning his vision for Baltimore yet again, with as much enthusiasm as he had 12 hours earlier, perhaps even more. It's all there -- the new-style neighborhoods, the more responsive city government, the lower homicide rate.
The questions begin. Here, no one asks The Question. But a woman does ask another question, one no citizen has put to Stokes all day: "How are you going to pay for this?"
At that very moment, the skies open up, and the rain once again begins to fall in earnest. Stokes and the crowd move inside. He's still talking.