In the crowded race for mayor in Boston, where candidates have struggled to distinguish themselves from the pack, Bill Walczak finds himself in an unusual position. He has stood alone in denouncing plans for an East Boston casino at the Suffolk Downs racetrack.

It’s as if he hit the daily double: It is a policy pronouncement he deeply believes in, which is also proving to be good politics.

For Walczak, who founded a Dorchester community health center more than 30 years ago and has been a one-man urban idea mill ever since, opposition to a casino is rooted in the broad view of public health that informs his thinking on most major issues. “People who work in the health field think broadly about where society needs to go in order for people to live out the World Health Organization definition of health, which is physical, emotional, and social health,” he says.

“What does a casino actually provide to the community that will make it healthier? Absolutely nothing,” he says. Calling casinos a “regressive tax” that mainly enrich huge casino companies at the expense of those with little to spare, Walczak says he can’t imagine why we would site on a city subway line a gambling facility that targets “working-class people and people on fixed incomes, elderly people, poor people.”

“The people that I’ve worked my entire adult life to create opportunities for are going to be the targets of this insidious industry that tries to take their money away from them,” he says.

Walczak is wonky without being overweening, dropping lines like the World Health Organization reference into conversation as easily as he banters with voters or exchanges howareyas with passersby. A working-class son of New Jersey, he landed here in the early 1970s on a scholarship to Boston University, eventually finding himself working as a community organizer in Dorchester, where he founded the Codman Square Health Center at age 25 and has lived ever since. Walczak is part of the cohort of non-politicians in the 12-way race, someone who has never run for office, though he has been steeped in the life of the city and is well-known around town.

His status as a political outsider is proving to be both a curse and blessing, though perhaps not in equal measure. He’s faced a steep learning curve when it comes to grabbing an audience with stage presence or delivering a pithy sound bite. And he had to start from scratch with fundraising and recruiting volunteers, key ingredients of any successful campaign where he lags far behind the campaign frontrunners. But his non-politician persona also brings a refreshing candor not always found on the campaign trail. Walczak speaks frankly and often without a politician’s built-in filter against offending a potentially important constituency.

Walczak at Roslindale mayoral forum in June.

That made opposition to a casino something of a no-brainer for him. It’s an issue on which he feels strongly, which is also giving valuable visibility to a candidate struggling for notice, including a front-page story in the Boston Globe.

Walczak’s strong anti-casino stand has also exposed a surprising wrinkle in the mayor’s race: A field of candidates that seems to embrace every left-leaning position that comes along has been oddly silent when it comes to the well-established liberal critique of casino economics. Virtually all the candidates either support the casino or, in the case of Dan Conley and John Connolly, say they are undecided on the issue. (Radio station owner Charles Clemons says he opposes a casino, but unlike Walczak he has not made that a prominent part of his campaign.)

“This is a much more of a test in my mind of someone’s progressive values than whether they support gay rights or they don’t want a Chick-fil-A or they’re going to support workers at fast-food restaurants,” says Peter Ubertaccio, a political science professor at Stonehill College. “It’s easier to take a stand on all those things.”

“I do find it discordant,” he says of the candidates’ stands, “because I think there’s such good data on the impact casinos will have on the local community. There’s just great information out there on the negative impact casinos can have. But when you look in the newspaper and see [talk of] 5,000 jobs and $32 million sent to the city annually, I think it becomes very difficult for folks in public life to ignore that as well.”

Also hard for many of them to ignore is Mayor Tom Menino’s strong backing for an East Boston casino, and his insistence that only East Boston voters have a say in the November 5 referendum on the issue.

Walczak doesn’t seem to mind running against the grain. In early September, following a Globe story reporting that Boston has seen a 90 percent decrease in major fires since 1975, Walczak again stood alone among the field, saying he’d work to reduce the number of firefighters and fire stations.

Walczak, who has also helped to found two high schools – one a charter school based at the Codman Square Health Center, the other a Boston district pilot school – has brought an entrepreneurial spirit and manager’s mindset to his years of community activism. He talks about bringing that outside the box thinking to all sorts of issues, challenging Boston in his initial TV ad to “think big.”

The mayor’s race is “about the potential of Boston and who has the best capacity to be able to help Boston achieve its potential as a city that could be the healthiest city, the greenest city, the city that has the best school system in America, the city that is the innovation hub of the East,” he says in an interview. “I see myself as the candidate who has the best experience in leadership and management to allow it to happen.”

Walczak delivers letter calling on City Council to approve
a citywide casino vote to council president Steve Murphy.

Every campaign involves a mix of talking about the issues a candidate would tackle in office and raising issues most likely to help win the office. The longtime Savin Hill resident is full of ideas for how city government could play a role in bettering Bostonians’ health. Walczak, whose wife taught for decades in the Boston public schools, has also embraced an aggressive school-reform agenda, which includes support for more charter schools, greater autonomy for district schools, and a commitment to universal prekindergarten.

But with a Globe poll this spring showing residents fairly evenly divided on a casino (44 percent in favor, 37 percent opposed), trumpeting at every turn his standing as the only candidate speaking out strongly against the casino is simply smart politics for Walczak in the sprint to the September 24 preliminary election. Walczak’s most recent TV ad focuses entirely on the issue, calling out his opponents who either support a casino or have refused to take a stand on the issue. In late August, he stood on City Hall Plaza to renew his call for a citywide casino vote, and then marched inside and delivered letters urging a citywide vote to all 13 city councilors and the mayor.

He even found a way to weave the issue into a recent forum on arts and culture issues. When the candidates were asked about their plans for supporting the city’s arts community, Walczak said the first thing he would do is stop the casino, whose slot machines and entertainment venues, he says, will siphon money that would otherwise support local arts.

As the race enters its final days, Walczak no doubt faces a stiff headwind. By happy coincidence for a guy known for speaking his mind thoughtfully but bluntly, that trait – which isn’t always an asset in politics — may provide his best ray of hope.