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Chris Kavanagh hopes that three times is the charm. 

Kavanagh, a middle school teacher, environmental activist and affordable housing advocate, has tried and failed twice to unseat moderate City Councilmember Polly Armstrong, once in 1996 and once in 1998.  

Now that Armstrong has announced she will not run for re-election in November, Kavanagh has joined a growing list of local activists who say they might run for the District 8 seat. 

“I’m interested,” said Kavanagh, who joins Gordon Wozniak of the Planning Commission, Becky O’Malley of the Landmarks Commission and UC Berkeley student Andy Katz as City Council hopefuls. 

Kavanagh, a Green Party member, cobbled together a coalition of students, renters and progressive homeowners in 1996, and lost by less than 1 percent of the vote. The close race surprised many in local political circles who considered District 8 a moderate bastion. 

Kavanagh attributes his 1996 success, in part, to aggressive, door-to-door campaigning. City Councilmember Dona Spring, who supported Kavanagh, agrees and says his interpersonal skills would be an asset if he ran this year. 

“He’s a very likable guy,” said Spring. “He really does the personal contact. That’s what he’s good at.” 

Spring said Kavanagh’s weakness, in 1996 and 1998, when he lost by a 58 to 42 percent margin, was a lack of organization. 

“He’s going to have to be more serious about raising money, and having a campaign manager, and doing what the manager wants him to do,” Spring said. 

But Armstrong said Kavanagh got close in 1996 because she ran a low-profile campaign. The 1998 results, she said, are more representative of his chances this time around. 

“I think he was very soundly rejected last time, when I ran a good campaign,” she said. 

Armstrong has thrown her support behind Wozniak, and other moderates are taking note. Mayor Shirley Dean,told the Daily Planet Friday, that she would be “very interested” in any candidate backed by Armstrong, and that she has been “very impressed” with Wozniak’s work on the Planning Commission. 

With moderates lining up behind Wozniak, progressives are beginning to worry that a growing field of liberal candidates may splinter the left. 

“I would hope and expect that liberal and progressive candidates would understand that splitting the vote is counterproductive,” said City Councilmember Kriss Worthington. “That’s how we got George Bush.” 

Worthington and Spring have both called for progressives in District 8 to come together and choose a single candidate. 

O’Malley and Katz have resisted the “progressive” label, casting themselves as bridges between the two sides.  

But both said they have concerns about candidates splitting the student vote, and other traditionally liberal voting blocs. 

If elected, Kavanagh said he would work to ease traffic in the district by pressuring UC Berkeley to provide its employees with transit passes and shuttle buses to and from local BART stations. 

He added that halting university expansion and ensuring proper disposal of radioactive waste at the university’s tritium lab, which will shut down for good in about a month, would be top priorities. 

Wozniak worked for years at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which houses the tritium lab, and has defended the tritium operation against vocal opponents. 

Kavanagh said he would make Wozniak’s support for the lab a campaign issue. Wozniak described community concerns over tritium a “tempest over a molehill,” but said that, in his mind, the issue is a dead one anyhow since the lab is closing.