In between last Friday’s downpours, Matt Patton stepped inside Ideal Sub Shop, a cash-only place on Dudley Street known for its steak and cheese – and lines out the door. It was standing room only that afternoon, and people darted in and out with their orders, one of them a young woman carrying out a breadbasket.

Patton flagged down one of the harried employees who had been alerted by a member of the Barros family that Patton would be coming by to ask if he could put a sign in the front window.

The sub shop is owned by an uncle of John Barros, who worked as Mayor Marty Walsh’s economic development chief and ran for mayor in 2013 and 2021. Patton had helped on both campaigns, and his resume also includes work for Gov. Deval Patrick and US Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Now the 41-year-old is running his own race as one of seven candidates for the District 3 City Council seat. After getting the nod from the employee, Patton placed his blue and white sign in the front window, and then got back in his car to head over to Columbia Road for some door-knocking down the side streets.

On Eastman Street, he was joined by his campaign manager, Frank Anthony, who had a few months ago finished a stint on John Moran’s successful campaign for state representative. The House district and the City Council district have some overlap, as the House district, anchored in the South End, stretches down to Columbia Road, near JFK/UMass MBTA Station. District 3 starts in Adams Village, its southern border at the Neponset River, and follows Dorchester Avenue up to Herald Street, adjacent to the Massachusetts Turnpike.

At the doors in Uphams Corner, where he was making his second or third go-round depending on the home, Patton, a North Reading native who now lives on Savin Hill with his wife Colleen and two kids, Josephine and Jude, made his pitch. At one door on Elder Street, he connected with a resident who complained about cars blowing down the street. There is a lack of available trash barrels, and as a result, there is plenty of litter, the resident said. A solar compactor is available over on Columbia Road, but it’s almost always overflowing, the resident noted.

“City services, that’s what we need to focus on,” Patton said, adding education as another. Patton said he had a speech impediment in kindergarten and struggled to read. “From what I remember,” he said, “it was the teachers, it was my speech pathologist and folks like who picked me up and got me over those learning disabilities. Without that, I would not be successful, I would not have gone to law school.”

He passed the bar exam in 2018, and found his way to the law firm run by Shannon Liss-Riordan and Harold Lichten with labor law is his focus, and while knocking on doors, he sought to draw a line between his work and his education. “Everyone should have the opportunity that I did to resources to overcome a speech impediment,” he said. “The way you do that is you provide high-quality education, and you make sure people have access to a job where they are paid what they should be paid and that they’re not being exploited.”

As storm clouds again loomed, he and Anthony criss-crossed Roseclair Street. Before parting ways with a reporter, the candidate responded to question about his path to victory. He pointed to supporters in the South End, the Cape Verdean community in Uphams Corner, Dorchester’s LGBTQ community, and individual backers like Cristo Rey Boston president Rosemary Powers, community activist Isaura Mendes, and firefighter Billy Hayhurst.

“It’s building a coalition of people who don’t have the same occupation, don’t have the same ethnicity or race, maybe come from different levels of affluence, but believe the city of Boston should be a place where everyone can have an opportunity to be successful,” Patton said, before turning to knock on another door.