Barely 2$ hours after the polls closed, commentators on two of Cleveland's TV and radio stations confidently predicted that incumbent Mayor Ralph S. Locher would win the Democratic Party nomination for another term. That seemed reasonable enough, since, with 70% of the ballots counted, the three-term mayor had a 10,000-vote edge over his closest opponent, Carl B. Stokes, a Negro. Yet within ten minutes, articulate, kinetic Stokes went before the TV cameras and confidently—and correctly—predicted his own victory in the primary. When it came, a short time thereafter, he exulted to...
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