With six contenders repping for a 2009 City Council race in Forest Hills, the current seat-holder – the term-limited Melinda Katz – recently tipped her hand on who may rise to the top.

“Melinda has not yet endorsed a candidate in the race,” her spokeswoman Molly Watkins told the Daily News last month. “She considers both of them friends.”

“Both,” Watkins later clarified, meant Queens Deputy Borough President Karen Koslowitz, who held the same Council seat from 1991 to 2001, and former Assemblyman Michael Cohen, who resigned in 2005.

That Katz didn’t even acknowledge the other contenders is telling – in line with many Democratic insiders who view the campaign as a two-horse race.

Undeterred, the rest of the crowded field vowed to forge ahead with their campaigns.

“I’m not intimidated,” said first-time candidate Heidi Harrison Chain, president of the 112th Precinct community council.

Lynn Schulman, who lost to Katz in the 2001 Council primary, bashed Koslowitz and Cohen as options to maintain the status quo.

“They represent the politics of the past,” she said. “I represent the community of the future.”

The contest also features a pair of former classmates from Archbishop Molloy High School in Briarwood: Bob DeLay, a former aide to Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi (D-Forest Hills), and Mel Gagarin, who worked for Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn, Queens).

DeLay and Gagarin, both 26, shrugged off criticism they’re too young for the seat.

“People have always been told it’s not their time,” DeLay said.

“Age to me is just a number,” said Gagarin.

Still, both candidates acknowledged that Koslowitz and Cohen are formidable opponents.

Koslowitz hasn’t officially declared since conflict-of-interest rules would force her to resign as deputy borough president. But she confirmed she’s a candidate, with decades of experience to boost her chances.

“I may be 66, but I was also … once 26, and I could do whatever they can,” she said, referring to DeLay and Gagarin.

Cohen said if elected he’d enact a parking permit plan so Forest Hills residents can find spaces by the Austin St.-Queens Blvd. commercial district.

First elected to the Assembly in 1998, Cohen insisted he left office in 2005 because he wanted to tend to his dying wife.

Democratic insiders confirmed his wife’s illness played a role in Cohen’s resignation, but added the party had pressured Cohen to leave office ever since he endorsed Republican Gov. George Pataki for reelection in 2002.

Party leaders allowed Cohen to stay until 2005 in hopes they could avoid forcing him out as his wife was dying, while picking a successor in the meantime, political sources said.

Source: NY Daily News