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Stokes began to match Taft detail for detail. He promised to combat the crime rate (up 14% last year) by increasing the police patrol-car force one-third, expand the airport with already available fill, eliminate a particular traffic bottleneck on Baltic Road ("the Baltic Blockade"), which, conjectured Stokes, costs a 20-year commuter 100 days off his life. He announced plans for an inaugural ball to raise money for clothing for children of relief families. Even with a skillful advertising campaign, a large and capable biracial campaign staff and a regiment of 2,000 door knockers, Stokes's lead was down to 0.28% a few days before election.
Election day dawned bleak and snowy, with the snow seemingly heavier on the eastern, or Negro side of town. The wind soon equalized that, and then it became apparent that the vote would be heavy—and there was every indication that a big turnout would mean a Taft victory. The pattern of Gary was duplicated as Stokes held fast to his Negro support—he got 96%—and attracted an estimated 19% of the white vote (he had received only 15% in the primary). Even so, it was close: Stokes's plurality was just 1,644 or 0.6%, out of a total vote of 256,992.
Air of Excitement. After a cordial election-night meeting with Taft, in which the loser proclaimed Cleveland "the least bigoted city in America" and Mrs. Taft gave Shirley Stokes a bouquet of long-stemmed roses, the mayor-elect named a new police chief, Inspector Michael ("Sledgehammer Mike") Blackwell; a safety director, Joseph McManamon; and a police prosecutor, James Carnes. All three are white. One of the first orders to the police department was to discard the riot helmets that had symbolized hostility to the ghetto dwellers.
Like the fund-raising inaugural ball scheduled for next week, the helmet directive was more gesture than substance, but it was the kind of gesture that had been sadly missing around city hall. A more pragmatic innovation is Stokes's plan to fully integrate police precinct squads regardless of the neighborhoods they serve. He tried to hire Edward Logue to head Cleveland's urban-renewal program, but Logue declined to leave Boston, instead will serve Stokes on a consulting basis. Meanwhile, Stokes is talent-hunting for a full-time urban-renewal director and other top officials; and he is drawing plans to produce more jobs. He is already talking about how long it will take to fulfill his share of the contract to "do Cleveland proud," as he asked the voters to do. In his expansive way, he figures ten years.
If Stokes lives up to his potential, he will be in demand for higher office long before 1977. Cleveland, in the interim, will be his testing ground. "It hasn't been an exciting town," says Tom Vail, "but it's about to become one. There's an air of something about to happen."