Dan Quart, by his own estimates, has knocked on 5,000 doors on the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island and phoned roughly the same number of residents in recent months.

Mr. Quart, 32, who has also turned the living room of his apartment at East 90th Street into his campaign headquarters, is one of at least a half-dozen candidates planning a run for the City Council in one of two districts on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

With the council speaker, Gifford Miller, and the chairwoman of the council’s education committee, Eva Moskowitz, vacating their neighboring districts’ seats, a wide range of contenders from both major political parties are seizing the opportunity to run for public office.

The candidates run the gamut. Some have never run for elected office; others have campaigned for decades. Some have been aggressively raising money and trying to boost their name recognition; others have yet to bank a dime and are still deciding whether to proceed.

As council races go, the two East Side elections are expected to garner more attention than most, partly because the young and restless Mr. Miller and Ms. Moskowitz have played important leadership roles during their tenures at the 51-member legislative body.

Mr. Miller, the most powerful member of the council, is leaving office as a result of the term-limits law and has raised millions of dollars to run for mayor next year. Rather than seek reelection, Ms. Moskowitz is giving up her seat to run for Manhattan borough president.

In Miller’s district, which stretches from 49th to 92nd streets and includes Roosevelt Island, at least four Democrats have already started campaigning. They include Mr. Quart, a lawyer who is co-chairman of the transportation committee at Community Board 8 and does pro-bono work through the Legal Aid Society; Jessica Lappin, a senior aide to Mr. Miller; George Spitz, an 82-year-old gadfly who has run in at least eight elections, including the 1997 race for Manhattan borough president, in which his platform was abolishing the office; and Edward Price.

Ms. Lappin, who will probably have her boss stumping for her, is said to be the favorite. During a phone interview Tuesday, Ms. Lappin, 29, who, like her opponents, hop scotches between community meetings and events almost every evening, said her experience in the council would be an advantage to constituents if elected.

“It’s difficult to learn how the council works,” she said. “It doesn’t happen overnight, but because I’ve worked in the district for so long and because I’ve worked in City Hall, I’ve really learned from the inside how the council functions and I have relationships with the council members.”

In July, the most recent deadline for filing with the city’s campaign finance board, Ms. Lappin reported $70,162 in contributions; Mr. Quart was not registered with the city board, and Mr. Price registered, but did not list any donations.

Over eggs and toast at a diner on 88th Street and Third Avenue, Mr. Quart, who wore a crisp button-down shirt, rebutted the notion that he was an underdog and said he would qualify for a full public match and spend the maximum allowable amount of $150,000 on the primary.

Political pundits say the next filing deadline for candidates participating in the public campaign finance program, January 18, will be an important barometer in identifying competitive candidates and weeding out those without a viable shot.

Several Republicans are also said to be considering a run for the 5th District seat, including a community activist, Nick Viest; an attorney, Jennifer Arangio, who won the primary and ran against Mr. Miller last year; and Douglas Winston, who was defeated by Ms. Arangio in a GOP primary last time around. Because of the new term-limits law and the redrawing of district lines, candidates who won elections in 2003 are serving two-year terms rather than the standard four years that next fall’s winners will get. Last time around, Mr. Miller and Ms. Moskowitz both enjoyed overwhelm ing wins, with 79% and 75% of the vote, respectively.

A Democratic consultant, Jerry Skurnik, called Ms. Lappin a “quasi-incumbent” because of her role on Mr. Miller’s staff. Another consultant said that being a Jewish woman in the Upper East Side district wouldn’t hurt either. The district has approximately 87,000 registered voters, of whom about 21,000 are Jewish and about 47,000 are Democrats.

While both East Side council seats were occupied by Republicans before Mr. Miller and Ms. Moskowitz first won election, most observers said there does not seem to be a GOP candidate – at least not right now – who can win it.

“Republicans can win seats on the East Side, but they sort of have to have all of the stars in alignment,” Mr. Skurnik said. He knows most of the candidates but is not acting as a consultant to any of them. “I don’t see that happening this year,” he said.

The Moskowitz district – a slightly larger one, with a more jagged shape – has 95,735 registered voters.

Though there’s no clear-cut frontrunner, Daniel Garodnick, a commercial litigator with a background in civil rights had raised an impressive $110,469 as of July and is still holding fund-raising events. His next one is scheduled for Monday night and has a number of elected officials on the host committee, including state Senator Liz Krueger, Council Member Christine Quinn, and several members of the Assembly. Elected officials, however, often show up at fund-raising events for competing candidates.

Mr. Garodnick, 32, has at least two Democratic opponents. They are Jack Lester, an attorney whose clients include the Stuyvesant Town Peter Cooper Tenants Associations, and Meryl Brodsky, the party leader in the 73rd Assembly District.

A member of the state Board of Regents, Meryl Tisch, had at one time been viewed as a possible candidate, but her name has been replaced with others. None of those candidates were registered with the campaign finance board. One possible aspirant, Michael Cohen, ran on the GOP line against Ms. Moskowitz last year. He could not be reached for comment for this article.

Mr. Garodnick and Mr. Lester generally commended Ms. Moskowitz, though they said they would handle relations with the teachers union differently. Ms. Brodsky said she has been “sparring with Eva” for the past six years over education, news boxes, and other topics.

With the United Nations smack in the middle of the district, the institution’s proposal to erect a 35-story office building at a city playground in Turtle Bay could emerge as a campaign issue. Mr. Lester has opposed to the project. Mr. Garodnick and Ms. Brodsky said the community must be given a park of equal or larger size should the proposal, which is now stalled in Albany, get the green light. None agreed with Ms. Moskowitz, who said the U.N. proposal could go forward in exchange for an esplanade along the East River.

In Miller’s district, all the candidates except Mr. Spitz seem to support building the Second Avenue subway line. Ms. Lappin cited sanitation and transportation as key issues. Mr. Quart named affordable housing and public transportation. Mr. Lester said increasing the city’s control over rent-stabilization guidelines and curbing institution al expansion were crucial. The others cited varying combinations of those issues, and all of the candidates listed education as a top priority. That is an apparent prerequisite for anyone seeking public office.

As candidates do, all touted their community experience. Mr. Garodnick painted himself as young and energetic. Ms. Brodsky, 56, seemed to characterize herself as an alternative to Ms. Moskowitz. Mr. Lester, 51, a former assistant district attorney who served as counsel to the state Senate finance committee, said he had the necessary combination of government know-how and community involvement. He also said he would not be eyeing higher office.

“I think it’s a benefit for the district that this is the job that I want to do and will commit to for the next eight years. I’m not interested in running for any office beyond that,” Mr. Lester said.

Though candidates for both seats have their signature issues, campaign spending and name recognition trump policy matters in most council elections.

With only seven council seats likely to be up for grabs next November, all of the races are expected to get more attention than the overview coverage council elections received during the last campaign, when 37 of the 51 council members were forced out due to term limits. The fresh-faced candidates – and several of them do have baby faces – have already sent out glossy literature and hired campaign consultants.

“Certainly these races are going to attract more attention,” a political consultant who is a friend of Ms. Lappin’s, Evan Stavisky, said. “You have fewer open seats this time around, and you have unique personalities involved with Gifford and Eva leaving.”

The door-to-door operations and the handshaking at subway stations will also intensify as the months wear on. For now, candidates are making introductions everywhere they can. Mr. Quart, for example, has taken to introducing himself at the gym, on the bus, and in subway stations.

“The subway is more dangerous, because there are people who will just think you’re a lunatic,” he joked. He said, though, that improving mass transit is a natural conversation starter “if you watch two or three 6 trains go by.”