‘You’re not the most popular person in Echo Park. William Toro is.’

An unexpectedly vigorous contest to select Echo Park’s first honorary mayor is winding to a conclusion with an apparent dark horse winner thumbing his nose at the competition.

“They never thought I could do this to them,” said William Toro, proprietor of the boathouse at Echo Park Lake. Toro is gloating over what appears to be an insurmountable lead over the favorite, grocer Leonard Leum. “They can’t believe how popular I am!” he said.

The race will end at the close of the banking day Wednesday, when the three contestants turn in the last of the proceeds from the raffle tickets they are selling.

The tickets go for $1 apiece and give the bearer one chance to win a color television donated by Leum’s Pioneer Market, which anchored the community’s commercial district at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Echo Park Avenue for 40 years.

Campaign treasurer Joellen Wiggington reported early this week that Toro had turned in $1,525, compared to $320 for Leum and $40 for the distant third-runner, Dr. Fredy Perez.

With no intention of coasting to a finish, Toro turned in another $500 on Tuesday.

“I guess you know, no one is going to catch up to me,” he said.

The idea of electing an honorary mayor came from Mike Leum, who manages Pioneer Market for his father and is also president of the Echo Park Chamber of Commerce. The goal was to make a few bucks for the chamber’s favorite causes--the Christmas parade and the Boys & Girls Club.

Leonard Leum, the patriarch of Pioneer Market, stepped into the race in a big way, recruiting the local scouts and Boys & Girls Club members to sell his tickets. He even had a campaign poster printed up.

Mike Leum conceded that there might have been an appearance of nepotism in all that. But he conceived the contest in the spirit of community spirit, not politics, he said.

Toro, who is not a member of the chamber, candidly says he saw an opportunity to shave down a couple of community egos.

“Whenever you hear about Echo Park, it’s Barragan’s and Pioneer,” he said, lumping a prominent family-owned restaurant along with Leum’s market. “I’m so tired of hearing it. I’m going to tell them, ‘You’re not the most popular person in Echo Park. William Toro is.’ ”

In spite of his popularity, the mayor-apparent remains a private and solitary man. He lives with his miniature Pomeranian, Charlie Fox, in a small, neatly kept house on Coronado Terrace in the hills north of Sunset. His ties to the community run deep.

Toro, who was raised in the Christ Home orphanage in Pennsylvania, moved to Echo Park shortly after leaving the Air Force in 1960.

“I had nothing.” he said. “I had nothing to lose. I said, ‘I’ll make it.’ You got a backbone, you can take care of anything.”

He started work at the boathouse in 1966, then bought the business in 1976.

He inherited his house from Gladys Church, a minister with Angelus Temple, the large-domed church built beside the lake by Los Angeles’ first religious luminary, Aimee Semple McPherson.

Toro said Church bequeathed the house to him three years ago when she died at 91 after he had cared for her for 20 years.

“I’d come every day and take care of her, cook her meals, feed her by hand, wash her hair and put it up in curlers, just like you would your own mother. She was a very good minister,” Toro said. “I have her on tape, the last service she gave at Angelus Temple.”

He keeps her photograph on his piano.

“I play beautifully,” he said. “It’s a gift the Lord gave me.”

With Charlie curled up at his feet, Toro played “Roll Out the Barrel” in the florid style of Liberace, his musical idol.

“I have him on tape when he did the show in Las Vegas,” Toro said.

Toro’s political philosophy is basic. He thinks voters are losing interest because no politicians listen to them.

“We asked for the death penalty. They refused it. We asked for insurance to come down. They refused it. They want to take our guns away. They want to take our beer away. Don’t go out and have two beers. You’ll get arrested for drunk driving.”

In the microcosm of Echo Park, Toro sees his candidacy as an antidote to that apathy.

“Nobody cared,” he said. “But I care.”

For weeks, he has been knocking on doors in his neighborhood, selling tickets to his customers and briskly staying one step ahead of Leum’s young recruits who, he said, are accustomed to being told, “Sorry, we already bought from Toro.”

“I’ve been here so many years, everybody knows me,” he said. “All the gangs know me. I’m the one they talk to. They don’t see old man Leum.”

Leum appears ready to concede his drubbing with grace.

“I just want the chamber to make a lot of money,” he said with a smile. “That’s why I let them use my name for this.”

On that point, Toro is in accord. If that will “betterfy Echo Park,” he said, he’s behind it.