Six-Gun Stan

It's not a common political trait, but it's one of the things that attracted Ferguson to serve as Glazer's campaign manager. Ferguson runs a staffing company by day and ran for Missouri lieutenant governor in 2004 as a Libertarian. Ferguson sometimes looks like he wants to put a hand over his candidate's mouth when Glazer really gets talking. At Ferguson's urging, Glazer has been practicing conciseness. Lori says she has helped Glazer realize that he doesn't have to give a dissertation in every answer.

"I gotta be me," Glazer tells people in his campaign pitch. "This town has got to be marketed, and I'm a marketer. I take distressed things and transform them. I want to be surrounded by people with high IQs who aren't obligated to anybody."

Some City Hall insiders have already dismissed Glazer. Worse than his brashness is the fact that he faces a formidable and crowded field of opponents, including at least three City Council members: Al Brooks, Becky Nace and Chuck Eddy. County Executive Katheryn Shields probably is, too.

Councilman George Blackwood — once a mayoral candidate himself and mayor pro-tem during the last four years of former Mayor Emanuel Cleaver's reign — hasn't written off Glazer yet. Blackwood says the function of the mayor in Kansas City is to market the city. "They are the head of the marketing department. But they have to surround themselves with people who know how to affect the concepts they come up with." It's a job that Blackwood can see Glazer filling, in the same way that Cleaver worked to promote the city.

Blackwood remembers when Cleaver, who now represents Kansas City in Congress, got wind that Transamerica was leaving its San Francisco headquarters. Cleaver went to San Francisco and asked the heads of the company, "Why don't you come to Kansas City?" Blackwood says Cleaver promised them a parking garage if they did. When Blackwood heard of the promise, he says he asked Cleaver, "How are you going to do that?"

"And Cleaver threw back his head and laughed and laughed and said, 'I don't know. That's why I've got you guys.'"

But even if Glazer knows how to sell Kansas City, he still doesn't know City Hall. For that, Glazer has a plan.

The last time he ran, Glazer dropped the name Mark Funkhouser a lot. The city auditor, Glazer reasons, is like the city's doctor. He knows what's wrong. He hopes that Funkhouser will provide a cheat sheet, telling Glazer how to fix it.

So Glazer schedules a meeting with the auditor. Glazer has been running from meeting to business lunch all week; so far, Glazer has met with three pages' worth of high-powered names to hand out glossy bios and give his spiel.

Funkhouser arrives at the conference room on the 21st floor of City Hall, coffee mug in hand, ready to sit down with Glazer, who has brought Esping. As soon as Funkhouser folds his tall frame into a chair, Glazer launches into his routine. It lasts a good 20 minutes.

"They tell me I was vaccinated with a phonograph needle," Glazer begins affably. Funkhouser smiles.

Glazer takes a breath. "I like the City Council people, I know them, but I don't know when the day's going to come that they start listening to you." He goes off on a tirade about the new stadium tax. "It irritates me to such a degree that I have to wonder whether this leadership has any business sense or cost accountability.... The only good news I see coming your way is there are six or seven new council people coming in who might listen to you."

Esping sits quietly at the table in his white sweater, his white eyebrows pointed up like horns. Funkhouser is chuckling along with Glazer, at least, which isn't a bad sign.

Glazer opens up his campaign dossier and launches into the tales of his sometimes successful and sometimes sordid history in this town. After the '51 flood washed out the meatpacking industry, a young Glazer and a group of friends bought an abandoned plant and 17 acres around it. The Glazer-Kaufman Warehouse was home to Goodyear Tire and Schlitz Beer.

Then, in 1961, he and two others revitalized a 150,000-square-foot warehouse to build the first Sav-On, one of the first giant discount stores. Glazer was the company's president and manager. He claims to have been first to introduce Kansas Citians to a new innovation: the shopping cart. Glazer also was involved in Sav-On's reorganization through bankruptcy before untangling himself financially from the venture.

He purchased and rehabbed the old trolley-car barn at 48th Street and Troost and created an auto auction where, he says, a car was sold "every three minutes." A black-and-white picture included in his dossier shows a crowd of men in suits and ties gathered around a handsome, auctioneering Glazer. That business was sold and later operated as the Wil-Ray Auto Auction Inc.

Glazer tailors his talk to each listener. He doesn't mention the Mafia to Funkhouser. To others, he reminisces about Kansas City's seamy history, when a little corruption was sometimes what it took to get deals done. Back in those days, the crime rate was low. Sure, some guys ended up dead in the trunks of cars, Glazer says, but their names nearly always ended in a vowel. Downtown's sidewalks were packed shoulder to shoulder, registers were ringing, the clubs were hopping. A guy didn't have to worry about looking over his shoulder if he wanted to talk with one of the ladies of the evening.