Joe Cimperman hopes to tear down his former hero, Dennis Kucinich

"This was '95. There were no cocktails of drugs you could take . . . Every new person I met died."

He recalls one patient named Kevin, a Baptist preacher who told his congregation that he was dying of cancer. "I went to Kevin's funeral, and everybody was talking about how evil cancer was," says Cimperman. "It was like, Jesus, God, he was gay. He had AIDS. Even in his death, can't you let him have the truth?

"I started thinking: If a straight white guy with my background — and 5,000 people like me — had AIDS, would the National Institute of Health maybe have found a cure by now? I realized politics is the application of power to will."

He also realized something else. "I had to get the hell out of Baltimore. It was changing me, making me dark." So he made tracks for the hometown he'd fled two years before.

By age 27, it was already clear he had the ambition gene of a career politician. Cimperman threw his hat into the race for the downtown council seat. There were nine candidates, including incumbent John Skrha.

"We just worked harder than any of the other eight people," says Will Johnston, Cimperman's unofficial manager for that campaign. "We used everyone's overconfidence to our advantage."

Cimperman's long-shot victory impressed many at City Hall — including himself. He was cocky, eager to outwork his complacent colleagues and make a name for himself. But there was another young councilman whose enterprise mirrored his own.

Zack Reed was a flashy young turk from Mount Pleasant. Both clearly believed their ceilings were beyond City Council. And, in a body known for lassitude, both were dead set on being the lone beacon of accomplishment.

They fought over everything, be it downtown parking meters or the placement of homeless shelters. "It was just two young guys with big egos, jostling for attention," says Cimperman.

"It wasn't a rivalry," adds Reed. "It was an all-out rift."

But it also meant that despite their lofty goals, neither was getting much done.

Cimperman uses the tale to illustrate his evolution. "It took about five years for me to realize that you have to work with other people."

It's a theme he commonly employs on the campaign trail. If there's a knock against Kucinich, it's that he picks a lot of fights but seldom wins. This is Cimperman's way of saying that he too will fight the good fight. It's just that at the end of the day, he wants something to show for it.

He routinely refers to his battle with Wal-Mart as exemplary of how he's learned to make things happen — even when he loses.

In 2005, Cimperman introduced an ordinance that would effectively bar the superstore within city limits. It was a popular move — at least among those who sway Democratic elections. Union leaders worried that Wal-Mart's cut-rate prices would kill off the city's organized groceries.

But developers of Steelyard Commons wanted the store to anchor their $100 million project. Cimperman soon learned that when you take on big money, your allies disappear quickly. Mayor Jane Campbell reversed her position, and the biggest fight of the councilman's career was instantly lost.

In his eyes, however, defeat would transform into his greatest coup.

"I could have sulked and said, 'To hell with them all,'" he says. Instead, he helped develop a tax plan that will raise millions to extend the Towpath Trail downtown.

These days, he brings up Wal-Mart in every speech, tweaking the angle depending on his audience. At a community meeting in Tremont, the story's about taking on corporate giants. At the corporate lawyer's house, it's about his ability to compromise with business. In every instance, he emphasizes the good relationships he maintains with foes after the battle, because it shows him as levelheaded, forgiving — the anti-Kucinich.

But Cimperman's found it difficult to straddle that line in other fights. His well-publicized crusades against nightclubs may have made him a sweetheart to neighbors. But in the view of those he's targeted, he's little more than a grandstander and a race-baiter.

The case of West Sixth Street's Spy Bar is perhaps his most polarizing fray. After a Fourth of July shooting in a nearby parking lot, people on the street were quick to finger Spy as a chronic source of violence. Cimperman railed against the club before news cameras and made it his quest to get the place shut down, though the shooter was never actually tied to the club.