Six-Gun Stan

A case of medals hangs on the wall underneath a mounted rifle and two framed certificates. There's a Purple Heart in a case. At the mention of his military service, Glazer's tone darkens.

"I don't go into that," he says sternly. "Other than that, I spent two years active duty in Korea and six years reserve." He says he doesn't want to talk about his military duty because his records were destroyed in a fire in St. Louis and he fears that if his political opponents look and can't find the records, they'll accuse him of fabricating his service history. (A call to Veterans Affairs confirms the plausibility of this story; many Navy military records during the time that Glazer would have served were lost in a fire.)

Asked about the Purple Heart, he says testily: "You bet I got hurt." He unbuttons the middle of his blue shirt to reveal a 3-inch-long vertical gash in the center of his abdomen.

Upstairs, there are photos of Glazer that he says were taken when he worked as a model in his twenties for a Gillette aftershave ad that never ran. He's leaning against a fence like a star in a spaghetti Western. In some, he's drawing six-shooters with a menacing look.

"You hear people say, 'I wish I would have done this or that,'" Glazer says. "Well, I attempted everything — everything that was legal. I tried paragliding, acting, racing cars, racing speedboats, a lot of things that good little Jewish boys didn't do."

He framed his dad's immigration and citizenship papers from Ellis Island. He says his father was among the group that "nagged" Harry Truman on behalf of making Israel a Jewish state.

"Truman ... once went bankrupt," Glazer says pointedly, alluding to his own personal bankruptcy that was filed when he closed his last restaurant in 1981. He blames the death of the restaurant on President Jimmy Carter, because interest rates skyrocketed during his administration. With a debt of $2.86 million, he had to shut the place down before it went bankrupt with him.

The phone rings. He says hello and then listens for a few seconds. Then he says, in an exaggeratedly cheery tone, "I gotta hang up on ya, buddy, but I'll talk to ya later." He explains that the caller was his son Craig.

Craig Glazer is one of his father's biggest sources of anxiety regarding the campaign. Everyone who knows Kansas City politics knows the stories (though they sometimes get father and son confused). Craig, who jointly owned his father's comedy club with his brother, Jeff, was busted for cocaine distribution in 2002; his sentence for sharing cocaine among friends amounted to a slap on the wrist.

In the late '90s, Stan Glazer sued his sons, claiming they'd broken a verbal contract when they took over his Westport comedy club. The way Glazer tells it, he gave Jeff and Craig his comedy club, and they agreed to pay him $5,000 a month. For a time, the sons paid their debt to their father by taking care of his car payments and utilities. Eventually, the payments stopped, so Glazer sued them. Because no written contract had been made between the parties about the payments, a judge ruled in favor of Jeff and Craig. Eventually, Glazer made up with his sons.

The other skeleton in Glazer's political closet, the accusation that he was caught soliciting a prostitute, was dug up during the 2003 election, thanks to Mayor Barnes' political ally Steve Glorioso. No charges were filed, and it has never been clear what happened. Glazer refuses to speak of it.

Though he says that he and his sons love one another dearly, he keeps them at arm's length in public and in the press for the sake of his campaign. For his part, Craig says he's happy to go on endlessly about his father's mayoral qualities, but he refuses to discuss anything spicier. His dad would prefer that he didn't speak to the media at all.

"I'm running for mayor, not him," Glazer says. "I can just see it now — 'Craig Glazer, who was caught using cocaine,'" Glazer says, imagining the text aloud. "You know, that judge only gave him 90 days. Don't you think if it was a bigger deal, the judge would have given him more than 90 days? He and ... some others are hanging out, and instead of beer, they get some cocaine, just like young guys."

None of these things, Glazer insists, have anything to do with his ability to lead the city. You won't find as much as a parking ticket on Stanford Glazer's record, he says. And one of the best things he has going for him now is that these so-called scandals are old news.

"Didn't do anything — that case was dismissed! My son and I went to court over a business lawsuit, a civil trial. They won. I lost. The case was ended. I shook hands with Craig and Jeff — it was five or six years ago — and that's the end of it. Who cares? Why is that such interesting material? I had some tax problems in business. Yes! Course I did!" Glazer says.