Gary McMichael's election literature promises he will battle to ensure areas like Hilden, Old Warren, Tonagh and Hillhall receive the same attention from Lisburn Borough Council as the affluent village of Hillsborough.
The working-class loyalist estates of south Lisburn are the stamping ground of the leader of the UDA-linked Ulster Democratic Party, a signatory to the Belfast Agreement. Failure to secure seats in the 1998 Assembly election has made it pivotal for the party to retain its four local government seats.
Mr McMichael (32), accompanied by his fiancee, Amanda, and six other canvassers, was on the campaign trail in Hilden last week. "I have a bit of history in this estate," he explains.
He points to the house where his father, Mr John McMichael, a UDA commander, lived prior to his death in an IRA booby-trap car-bomb in 1987. His stepmother and half-brother continue to live there.
Around the corner in the estate, he puts his leaflet through the door of a house once belonging to his grandparents. Next door, an elderly woman asks him to sign the pamphlet. "I'll put you up in the window beside Jeffrey Donaldson," she says.
Mr McMichael, a community drugs project worker and local councillor for eight years, stresses community rather than the wider political issues on the doorsteps. The need for reduced rates for the unemployed at Lagan Valley leisure centre and additional resources to help estates deal with drug, alcohol and youth problems are priorities.
He admits a "comedy of errors" led to the party's failure to register the party name and logo with the electoral commission, and representatives will now appear on the ballot paper as independents. "I don't think it will hurt me, I'm well known here," he adds. In Ashfield Gardens, Mr McMichael points to a corner house at the entrance of another estate. "I started a community association there when I was 17. It's still going to this day, based in another house."
On the street he meets a woman whose home in Hillcourt Park was targeted in a petrol-bomb attack the previous night. Her hands are blackened from moving belongings from her damaged sitting room.
"My TV and video got done. I don't know why it happened, I've only just moved in here. I don't know anyone," she says as she rolls his election leaflet nervously in her hands.
At the rear of the estate, a member of the community association committee shows Mr McMichael the additional house acquired from the housing executive to enable the committee to expand its services for locals.
"When we get the keys we'll put up a connecting door," he says. "Well done, it's some achievement," replies Mr McMichael.