Democrat Phil Wong wants to succeed his boss, outgoing Councilman Bob Holden.<\/p>\n
So does Republican Alicia Vaichunas. Holden is also her boss.<\/p>\n
Holden\u00a0\u2014 in an unusual, if diplomatic, move\u00a0\u2014 is backing both candidates in\u00a0 Queens District 30, which covers the neighborhoods of Maspeth, Middle Village, Rego Park and Ridgewood.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Two staffers of outgoing Councilman Bob Holden are running against each other
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Holden endorsed both candidates, Democrat Phil Wong and Republican Alicia Vaichunas
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Council District 30 in Queens covers the neighborhoods of Maspeth, Ridgewood and Rego Park<\/p>\n
On Monday, Wong was near an early voting site in Ridgewood.<\/p>\n
As Holden’s constituent services and budget director, he helped agencies and organizations find more funding.<\/p>\n
“I think once elected, I’ll be doing that every day, always looking for more resources to improve nonprofits in the district,” Wong said.<\/p>\n
On constituent service, Wong said, “Councilman Holden\u2019s model works \u2014 every phone call is traced, logged and followed up on. We don’t turn anybody away.”<\/p>\n
Vaichunas is Holden\u2019s deputy chief of staff. She joined the office after successfully advocating for parochial students in local high school admissions.<\/p>\n
“That\u2019s when Bob asked me, ‘Hey Alicia, wanna work for me?’ And I said, ‘You win, I’ll work for you.'”<\/p>\n
Holden is a Democrat, but he won his first race for City Council on the Republican ballot line, defeating the incumbent.<\/p>\n
Holden founded the Common Sense Caucus on the council. It’s a group of conservative and moderate lawmakers from the Democratic and Republican parties.<\/p>\n
Vaichunas prides herself on keeping tabs on problems in the neighborhood, like loud music and drag racing.<\/p>\n
“A lot of them know me as the woman who goes around at night chasing the music, the racing, doing the donuts,” she said outside of her Maspeth campaign office.<\/p>\n
Vaichunas even had her son, John, snap a photo of a pothole so she could try to get it fixed.<\/p>\n
On policy, Wong says his priority is to recruit more police officers.<\/p>\n
“We have several thousand to hire back, and it\u2019s important. [We’ve] got to reduce the response time.”<\/p>\n
Vaichunas wants to focus on students with disabilities.<\/p>\n
“They are our most vulnerable students, and they\u2019re the ones who always get shafted,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Democrat Phil Wong wants to succeed his boss, outgoing Councilman Bob Holden. So does Republican Alicia Vaichunas. Holden…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[109,114,25,13408,111,9,24,12,63,87,122,124,123,27,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-19618","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-app-local-state-politics","9":"tag-app-local-elections","10":"tag-app-top-stories","11":"tag-dan-rivoli","12":"tag-decision-2025","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-queens","19":"tag-queens-headlines","20":"tag-queens-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}