Duke of Edinburgh’s Award chief Donte Hunt is bidding to run for the United Bermuda Party in the seat Renée Webb will vacate at the next election.

Mr. Hunt, who recently resigned as National Director of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards to head back to the corporate world, hopes to be adopted as candidate for St. George’s South next week but conceded his party might yet reject him.

But if selected he is confident he can pick up the seat which the UBP missed by just eight votes in 2003.

He told The Royal Gazette: “I am going to win it. I am going to be out there doing as much as I can to get to know the community personally.”

But he realises he has a huge job — St. George’s South (Constituency Four) is Bermuda’s largest geographically, wrapping all around Castle Harbour, covering chunks of Hamilton Parish, Tucker’s Town and St. David’s. Mr. Hunt lives just five minutes away in Flatts.

The 29-year-old stressed he wasn’t profiled and poached by the UBP as a young black face to run in the seat.

He said he had been in the party for a while and had a desire to enter politics to help humanity.

Asked why he had chosen the UBP, Mr. Hunt, who is married to a white woman, said: “I have two girls who are bi-racial. I don’t want to have them grow up in a Bermuda where they have to choose which side they are on.

“I truly believe in the United Bermuda Party and I have been with the UBP for a few years.”

He said family and housing were the issues he most hoped to address as they affected every other area of life.

Mr. Hunt, who used to work as an operations manager at Capital G Bank, said he had seriously considered becoming a missionary but the arrival of his children put the blocks on that.

Now he is turning to politics.

“There is a misconception that politics is bad, that politicians are bad. I don’t believe that. I bring a high level of integrity.”