The 2009 race for City Hall is already underway in Richmond Hill, where a 23-year-old businessman is challenging incumbent Councilman Thomas White.
Lynn Nunes, who ran against White for a Democratic District Leader position earlier this year, said he is eager for a rematch.
"This district ranks in the bottom of education, crime and foreclosures," said Nunes, a recent Queens College graduate.
"I'm not promising the world, but we should be on every doorstep and trying to improve the community," he said.
White first held the seat from 1991 to 2001, when he was forced out by term limits. He returned to office after defeating controversial incumbent Allan Jennings in 2005.
Nunes noted White has one of the worst attendance records in the Council. It has earned him the moniker "the invisible man."
"There was enough dust on his desk to have an archeological dig," Doug Muzzio, a professor of public affairs at Baruch College, told the Daily News in 2005.
White, who voted for the controversial term-limit extension bill in October, did not respond to Queens News' requests for comment.
Nunes and White are the only declared candidates in the district, according to the city Campaign Finance Board.
Nunes said he doesn't feel his youth is a handicap. He noted both Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Joe Crowley (D-Queens) were elected to the Assembly in their early 20s.
"I may be a political outsider, but I'm a neighborhood insider," said Nunes, who kicked off his business career by selling bed sheets and cologne at Aqueduct flea markets.
He also worked as a lifeguard in Rockaway before opening his own real estate office. Many of his friends said the Christ the King High School graduate has always been civic-minded.
"He was going to all the community board meetings and writing elected officials [when he was a teenager]," said George Parpas, 24, a law school student who grew up with Nunes. "We'd poke fun at him, but we admired him for what he was doing."
Nunes said he hopes to use his real estate knowledge to help homeowners facing foreclosure.
"There aren't enough resources available for people in the area," Nunes said.
Asked why he was challenging a veteran incumbent, Nunes said, "People feel that [White] has neglected the community."
In April, the Daily News unearthed city records showing that White was hosting water bill seminars for his constituents even as the nonprofit group he heads owed more than $226,000 in water bills.
"I will approach this job with a sense of urgency," Nunes vowed. "We have a lot of problems that need to be resolved."
