Nestor Garcia intends to get ahead by shaking a lot of hands.

"I always say, the person who shakes the most hands wins," said Garcia, who is working overtime and racking up frequent flier miles to get converts in outlying O'ahu and on the Neighbor Islands. "The funny thing about this town is you cannot assume that any one of us is entitled to this job."

Ten Democrats and two Republicans are in the running for the U.S. House seat in the 2nd Congressional District, vacated when U.S. Rep. Ed Case decided to run for U.S. Senate.

There are more than 604,000 people in the district, according to the 2000 Census.

An Advertiser poll conducted in June showed about 64 percent of voters polled were not familiar enough with Garcia to have an opinion on him.

Still, the 49-year-old City Councilman is optimistic that his strategy — to walk neighborhood after neighborhood, knocking on doors — will get him noticed. And with 12 years of experience in elected office, Garcia says he's ready to face national concerns along with big-scale Hawai'i problems in Washington, D.C.

In Waipahu, where Garcia grew up and now lives, the candidate has a strong core of supporters who have watched him make tough, sometimes unpopular decisions in the state Legislature and City Council over the years. Former Waipahu Neighborhood Board Chairwoman Annette Yamaguchi, who has known Garcia for about a decade and has served as his campaign manager, said the candidate is respected because he always studies issues before making decisions on them.

"He doesn't knee-jerk react to what the problems are," Yama-guchi said. "He really takes the time to study what it is that has been brought to him. He's not a majority thinker."

A HUMBLE START

Garcia and his two younger brothers grew up in a walk-up in Waipahu with their single mother, who was forced to rely on welfare to make ends meet.

Memories of a lean childhood morphed Garcia into a strong advocate of government assistance and a critic of a decade-long national push to toughen welfare laws.

"I understand what it meant to wait for the welfare check and food stamps," Garcia said. "We need to try to make sure government is there when you need it most. That strikes to the core of trying to help people out of poverty. I want to make sure people on welfare, especially single women, are not running in place, but that they are scaling the ladder. That's what I would like to see."

State Sen. Clarence Nishihara, who has known Garcia for a decade and encouraged him to run for the state Legislature, said the candidate speaks for the underdog and the under-served because he knows what it feels like to be without a voice.

"What I think makes him a credible person is he doesn't put on airs," said Nishihara, D-18th (Waipahu-Crestview).

"He's certainly for the underdog."

WAIPAHU HIGH GRADUATE

Garcia attended public schools and graduated from Waipahu High School. He went on to the University of Hawai'i, where he got a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1980.

From 1981 to 1991, Garcia worked at KHON as an on-camera reporter.

He left the station to become press secretary for U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye and returned to the Islands two years later, joining public relations firm Hill and Knowlton Hawai'i. Then, in 1994, he was hired as a vice president with City Bank, where he stayed until 2005.

Also in 1994, Garcia was elected to the state House. He spent nine years as a legislator, where he pushed for more affordable housing and poverty relief programs.

In 2003, Garcia was elected to the City Council, where he is a member of the Executive Matters and Legal Affairs, Public Safety and Planning, and Intergovernmental Affairs committees.

GOING AGAINST MAJORITY

Garcia's fans say they admire his determination to do what he thinks is right, regardless of whether others agree. Over the course of his political career, he has gone against the majority several times — and sometimes ended up persuading them to change their positions.

As chairman of the House Public Safety and Military Affairs Committee, Garcia championed passage of a law that sends first-time, nonviolent drug offenders to treatment instead of prison.

And he supported expanding prison space in the Islands for men and women so fewer convicts would have to be sent to the Mainland to serve out their sentences. Garcia said keeping prisoners in Hawai'i would make their transitions back into the community easier and decrease repeat offenses.

On the City Council, he served on the Planning and Transportation Committee, where he fought for passage of a bill to increase the general excise tax to help finance a transit rail system. Garcia also disagreed with his fellow council members over their attempts to exempt the four county councils from the state's open-government statute, called the Sunshine Law.

"I think that's one of his hallmarks," Nishihara said. "You've got to make tough decisions."

Reach Mary Vorsino at mvorsino@honoluluadvertiser.com.