ANN ARBOR, MICH. — He expected to win. He had raised the most money, peers volunteering countless hours, and two campaign managers and a former counsel to President Clinton advising him. So when the results were tabulated after the Aug. 2 Ann Arbor City Council election, Eugene Kang was crushed.

With 46 percent of the votes, the 21-year-old fell short of being the first Korean American ever — and the first college student since the 1970s — to hold public office in the Michigan college town.

The seat went to Stephen Rapundalo, a research scientist at Pfizer Inc. and former mayoral candidate who once warned voters against Kang’s “naïveté” and lack of experience. Kang, however, told his staff that he wanted to avoid any smear campaigns and chose instead to focus on what he himself would do, rather than denounce his opponent’s shortcomings.

In taking the high road, Kang, an Ann Arbor native, proved a formidable opponent. The University of Michigan undergraduate brought a new perspective to a city that, he said, has historically been mired in bourgeois traditions and bureaucratic morass. Slash the budget deficit, he proposed. Make Ann Arbor more affordable. Listen to younger voices.

Kang’s platform drew considerable support from both the local populace, including the firm backing of Korean Americans, and the university community, which has long complained that the city is unresponsive to students’ needs.

After publicly declaring his bid earlier in the summer for the seat of Ann Arbor’s 2nd Ward, Kang pounded the pavement for weeks, knocking on doors and petitioning for votes. His campaign aides sported T-shirts that read “Eugene Kang - Democrat for City Council” in blue and maize, the Wolverines’ school colors.

The desire to run for office had germinated one year earlier — during a 2004 summer internship in Washington D.C., where he “caught the political bug.” Proud of his broad knowledge of national and international affairs, the English and philosophy double major realized by summer’s end that he lacked sufficient awareness of local issues. He began digging through archives of past council meetings in a self-taught crash-course in Ann Arbor politics. The more he read, he said, “the more I was frustrated of the things the council was doing” — like slashing city services and increasing “already high” taxes to manage a budget deficit. Students are marginalized in Ann Arbor, he also noted. Their rent is disproportionately high. The city’s willful disregard of students’ needs is egregiously exhibited during council meetings. All of that must stop, he said.

Kang is joined by Elder Nam, a leader in the Ann Arbor Korean American community, while he addresses a group of first-generation Korean Americans.

In January, he decided that “the best chance at making a difference and actually doing something might be to run and to make some of those changes from the inside.” He kicked the idea around in his head, and in April, as his junior year drew to a close, announced to family and friends that he planned to run for city council.

Professor Marvin Krislov, a former White House associate counsel during the Clinton administration, was among the first to whom Kang made the announcement. Krislov, currently University of Michigan’s vice president and general counsel, lauded Kang’s decision, and introduced his student to the men who eventually became his campaign managers — one on the East Coast and one “on the ground” in Ann Arbor.