Former labor minister Hsu Ming-chun (許銘春) on Tuesday announced her intention to run in the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) primary to select its candidate for the Kaohsiung mayoral election scheduled for 2026, making her the most recent entrant in what is becoming a crowded race.
Hsu, who served as the southern port city’s deputy mayor between 2016 and 2018, is the fifth member of the ruling party to declare a bid for its Kaohsiung mayoral primary election, even though Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) has not yet reached the halfway point of his term.
DPP lawmakers Lin Dai-hua (林岱樺), Lai Jui-lung (賴瑞隆), Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) and Hsu Chih-chieh (許智傑) have already expressed their intentions to stand in the primary election.
Photo: Taipei Times
The DPP’s approach is different from that of the main opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), for which Legislator Ko Chih-en (柯志恩) is widely regarded as its most likely candidate in the 2026 election.
Ko, who garnered nearly 530,000 votes in 2022, failed to unseat Chen, who obtained 766,147 ballots.
While all the DPP candidates have emphasized the importance of unity in the race, their opinions differ on when the primary election should be held.
Following Hsu Ming-chun’s declaration, Hsu Chih-chieh urged the DPP to hold the primary six months earlier than scheduled to prevent the party’s supporters from worrying for too long, local Chinese-language media reported.
While Lin said it was important to meet the voters’ expectations regardless of the timing, Chiu said it is still “way too early” to discuss the matter given how much time remains in Chen’s term, local media reported.
Kaohsiung, the third-most-populous special municipality in Taiwan, has long been a DPP stronghold since Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) was elected mayor in 1998.
Other than Yang Ming-chou (楊明州), who served for two months as acting mayor in 2020, the only non-DPP mayor to govern Kaohsiung since 1998 is Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT, who won the mayoral election in 2018. However, in June 2020, Han became the first mayor in Taiwan’s history to be recalled by popular vote.
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