Su maintains moderate stance and the lead

The two contenders in the election for Taipei County commissioner are taking a moderate stance in a constituency where voters are known to assign more weight to the candidates themselves than their partisan tags.

Well aware of the county's electoral make-up, incumbent County Commissioner Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) of the DPP is building his campaign around an apolitical theme and touting his administrative credentials.

His main challenger, Wang Chien-shien (王建火宣) of the New Party, is portraying his camp as the true mainstream by playing up the joint endorsement of his candidacy by the opposition alliance.

Su, who owes his narrow victory four years ago to a KMT split, knows full well he cannot win re-election in December without votes from traditional opposition supporters.

To that end, Su has worked hard to befriend opposition county councilors as well as town and village leaders since assuming office in late 1997. Many of them attended the opening ceremony of his campaign headquarters a few days ago and some are helping him campaign.

A recent poll showed Su's approval rating at 70 percent and put him ahead of Wang by more than 10 percentage points. The two independent candidates, Shao Chien-hsin (邵建興) and Shih Yi-ching (石翊靖), are considered to be out of the running.

But Su doesn't dare get too comfortable. The electoral strength of the DPP, about 30 percent of the total vote, is insufficient to guarantee victory in a one-on-one duel.

"The year-end election will serve as a landmark test of whether the voters can put partisan concerns on the back burner and reward our hard work with a second term," Liao Chih-chien (廖志堅), spokesman for the Su campaign, said.

With 3.6 million residents, the county is the largest constituency, demographically and geographically. A sizable number of the population moved to Taipei from other parts of the nation and mobility makes it difficult for partisan appeals to take root.

"That explains why James Soong (宋楚瑜) led the pack and drew 820,000 votes from the county in last year's presidential election when he ran as an independent," said Emile Sheng (盛治仁), a political scientist at Soochow University.

In his attempt to embrace the center, Su has kept the ruling DPP at arm's length for fear of falling victim to growing pubic discontent as a result of the sliding economy and rising unemployment.

"Factors unrelated to the county should not be brought into the campaign, which is purely local in nature," Liao said. "A candidate should be judged by his own merit."

Still, Wang is poised to make an issue of the parlous state of the economy while seeking to wrap his bid in a cross-party cloak.

"A vote for Su is a vote [of approval] for President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) administration for the past 17 months," said Hsu Ming-jen (許明仁), spokesman for the Wang campaign.

The camp also plans to pan the incumbent commissioner as a prodigal spender who has lavished huge amounts of tax dollars on petty projects with the intention of augmenting his own political clout.

"When former commissioner You Ching (尤清) left office, the county government reported a budget surplus of NT$9 billion," Hsu said.

"After four years under Su's stewardship, it had accumulated a deficit of NT$21.6 billion."

Wang, who moved his registered residency to the county in July, is neither familiar with local politics nor connected to factional leaders of the constituency.