Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) yesterday called for unified support for his colleague Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕), who is expected to receive the KMT’s official nomination as its Taichung mayoral candidate today.
Lu earlier this month edged out Chiang by a narrow margin of about 0.6 percent in opinion polls for the party’s primary for the mayoral post, securing a support rating of 50.308 percent against Chiang’s 49.692 percent.
“The 0.6 margin does not and will not change my love for Taichung. I will not be absent from a campaign that would shape the city’s future development,” Chiang said on Facebook after former Taichung mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) paid him a visit at his residence in Taichung earlier yesterday.
The KMT’s Taichung mayoral candidate would no doubt do their utmost to form a strong campaign team in the hope of winning back the municipality, one that he said would not only include himself, but many other talented people, Chiang said.
“Though Lu and I have yet to go into the details about the lineup of her campaign team and the position [I would hold], I will keep an open mind and prioritize the bigger picture over formality,” Chiang said.
The key for the KMT taking back Taichung is to provide voters in the city with a clearer and more effective blueprint for the future, so as to set the party apart from Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung’s (林佳龍) slogan-centered style of leadership, Chiang said.
Chiang said he is confident that Lu would do a better job than him and asked members of the KMT Central Standing Committee to throw their unified support behind Lu and nominate her as the party’s Taichung mayoral candidate at a today’s committee meeting.
Hu was Taichung mayor from 2001 to 2014, before losing to the Democratic Progressive Party’s Lin by about 200,000 votes in the 2014 nine-in-one local elections.
The merger of Taichung City and Taichung County in 2010 allowed Hu to bypass the two-term limit and run for mayor of the special municipality that year.
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