The battle lines for November’s special municipality elections have extended from Taiwan to overseas, with both the ruling and opposition camps preparing to hold campaign rallies in the US.
Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) mayoral candidate for Taipei City, announced he would make a six-day trip to the US later this month to drum up support among overseas supporters.
His campaign office said the trip, made at the invitation of US-based Taiwanese organizations, would include stops in Los Angeles, New York, as well as a transit in San Francisco. Su will travel from Aug. 13 through Aug. 18.
During the tour, Su, accompanied by his wife and two daughters, will meet overseas Taiwanese groups and ask them to support the DPP’s campaign and urge them to return to Taiwan and vote.
Su, currently neck-and-neck with his Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) opponent, Taipei City Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), said he would use the trip to New York to study its urban planning.
This will be Su’s first public trip to the US since announcing his candidacy in May for the hotly contested seat. It comes almost three years after a previous election tour in North America to drum up support and raise funds when he was running for vice president in 2008.
He is expected to travel first to Los Angeles, where he will hold an election event in the suburb of Pasadena on Aug. 14. Su will fly to New York the following day to take part in a fundraising dinner organized by the “Year-end Election Overseas Support Group.”
Tickets for the dinner, held in Flushing, New York, will range from US$100 to US$2,500 a seat.
Speaking at a campaign stop yesterday, Hau urged the former premier to avoid turning his tour into a canvassing event, saying, “it wouldn’t be a good visit if it was only about getting [their] votes.”
Hau’s campaign office said the mayor did not have any overseas trips lined up, adding he had his hands full with the Taipei International Flora Expo, which opens in November.
However, a supporter group for the KMT in the US said that a rally to drum up support for the KMT candidates in the five municipalities would be held in the Los Angeles suburb of Alhambra on Aug. 14, coinciding with Su’s visit.
The two candidates also sparred yesterday over the future of a children’s park in the city.
Su, traveling to visit Yilan’s International Children’s Folklore and Folkgame Festival in the morning, blasted the Taipei City Government’s relocation of a city-run children’s park to make way for the Flora Expo.
He said that if he were elected, he would provide a comprehensive plan for the future of the park, adding that he would increase the number of leisure spots throughout the city and seek to attract more major cultural events.
Hau said Su’s criticism came because he failed to understand current municipal developments, saying the relocation of the children’s park was a plan that had already been completed.
The park will be relocated next to the Taipei Astronomical Museum in Shilin District (士林), Hau said.
Additional reporting by CNA
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