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His strategy, identical to Hatcher's in Gary, was to organize the Negro vote solidly and chip away at the white electorate. It worked: his plurality over Locher was a comfortable 18,736, even though the Cuyahoga County Democratic chairman, Albert Porter, had allowed letters to go out calling Stokes a "racist Republican."
Tea & Rap. Nonetheless, Stokes emerged from the primary as the clear favorite in the general election. He was an experienced, chipper, charismatic campaigner who could beguile white suburban clubwomen at tea and rap with soul brothers in Hough. He was a Democrat in a town that had not elected a Republican mayor in the past 26 years. And his opponent was Seth Taft, 44, who bore the multiple burdens of a stiff presence, the wrong party label plus nephewship to the "Mr. Republican" who co-authored the Taft-Hartley Act, longtime anathema to organized labor.
Taft turned out to be a liberal, and a dogged, gutsy campaigner to boot. He saw "human relations" as the city's number one problem and poured out a spate of specific ideas while Stokes tended to generalize. "We don't need more plans in this city," Stokes declared at one point. "What we need is action." Actually, he was already on record with his own specifics. To an all-white meeting of policemen, Stokes declared his intention of firing Police Chief Richard Wagner as his first order of business. To a Negro club he promised: "We're going to enforce the law so that it hurts. I don't want any riots in my town." He came up with a plan to economize by selling an obsolescent municipal power plant and a little-used park. At risk of alienating Negro friends, he came out against a civilian review board to investigate allegations of police brutality.
Though Taft had scrupulously avoided the race issue—despite Stokes's needling about his upper-crust background —some of the Republican's aides openly injected color into the campaign. Perhaps in response to this pressure, Stokes a month before election day blurted during a debate that if Taft won it would be purely because of bigotry on the part of Clevelanders.
Detail for Detail. That hint of arrogance hurt Stokes. His campaign manager, Dr. Kenneth Clement, was to rue later: "A lot of people who did not like the idea of a Negro mayor were waiting for an excuse to vote against him." It was not merely an error but a near calamity. In the early opinion polls Stokes had led Taft by 30 points and more. Now he was running scared. He dropped his supercilious needling and swung into substantive issues. To answer his opponent's charge that he had been a poor legislator, Stokes produced a testimonial that read: "The reports I hear of your performance in Columbus are excellent, and I congratulate you on your job." The letter was dated last June 8 and signed by Seth Taft.