TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — The stakes are high for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) — and extremely high for the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) — in the Hsinchu City mayoral race.
The Kuomintang (KMT) would dearly love to reclaim this city, but with their party set to do well in this year’s 9-in-1 elections, not winning in Hsinchu will not impact the party much in the bigger picture.
Like much of northern Taiwan in the last two decades, Hsinchu was considered a blue (pro-KMT) leaning city. In 2014, during the big pan-green (pro-DPP) sweep, however, the city elected the DPP’s Lin Chih-chien (林智堅).
Lin proved popular, and was one of the few DPP leaders to hold his seat in the big pan-blue wave in 2018. Early in this election, the DPP was looking like they were in a great position to hold both Hsinchu and Taoyuan.
Not allowed to run again in Hsinchu due to term limits, the party nominated rising star Lin to be their candidate in Taoyuan. Hoping to capitalize on the popularity of his administration, at Lin’s suggestion, the party chose Vice Mayor Shen Hui-hung (沈慧虹) as their candidate, though that meant she had to hurriedly join the DPP.
Wheels off DPP campaign
Then the wheels started to come off the DPP’s hopes in the region. It turned out that nominating Lin was a disastrous choice that has seriously weakened the party in both Hsinchu and Taoyuan.
Allegations that Lin plagiarized his advanced academic degree thesis at first one, then another university surfaced. He insisted he was innocent, and the party and party Chair Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) backed him.
In the end, both universities ruled he was guilty, and stripped him of his degrees. While in the midst of trying to fend off his attackers on that front, he was hit with a scandal on a second front.
As former Hsinchu mayor, Lin had to take responsibility for the Hsinchu baseball stadium having to be shuttered indefinitely for safety reasons just days after it had reopened following the completion of a three-year NT$1.2 billion (US$40 million) botched renovation project that left multiple players injured. Suddenly, the shine on his administration was seriously damaged, and by extension Shen Hui-hung.
Damage spreads
Lin had to resign as the party’s candidate in Taoyuan, and making things worse, the choice to replace him was controversial and led to an angry potential DPP candidate bolting the party to run as an independent. All this damaged the image of the party in the north, especially in Taoyuan and Hsinchu, by having shown poor judgement in choosing Lin, and then persisting in backing him even as evidence mounted he was guilty of plagiarism.
If the choice of Lin does end up sinking their campaigns in both Hsinchu and Taoyuan, and they lose both, it would be a major setback for the DPP. Not only would they be losing two important cities, one of which is a special municipality, it puts the party at risk of ending up with an even worse result this election cycle than the 2018 race.
If that happens, it would be a blow to the party, and party Chair Tsai would face calls for her resignation. They are desperately hoping to hold both, which remains a possibility, but their initial expectations of two easy wins are now dashed.
Thesis allegations spread
The KMT’s candidate, Hsinchu City Councilor Lin Ken-jeng (林耕仁), must have been feeling pretty good, but was soon himself facing allegations of plagiarising his own thesis by members of the DPP. He, however, was cleared by his university and got to keep his degree, further embarrassing the DPP.
Then it was the TPP’s candidate, Legislator Ann Kao (高虹安), who faced allegations of plagiarism in a local news magazine. In her case, however, the accusation was of plagiarizing herself, and in the end, the University of Cincinnati upheld her degree.
Her own work that she had copied had been work she had done for the government-funded Institute for Information Industry (III), and they took a very different view. They launched a criminal lawsuit against her for plagiarizing copyrighted material without citing the source.
That is not all the III was upset about, they also accused her of double-dipping by simultaneously working for another company while also working for them, without filing the proper paperwork. Kao defended herself, producing emails suggesting her supervisors were well aware of it, and even suggested they approved of it at the time.
Enter Taipei District Prosecutors
Up to this point, her support had remained strong and her campaign was on a roll, but the latest allegations appeared to blunt her momentum, though did not appear to have reduced her support. On Thursday (Nov. 17) the Taipei District Prosecutors Office listed Kao and her boyfriend as defendants over allegations of wage fraud related to her legislative assistants.
It’s complicated, but in a nutshell she is accused of skimming money off of legislative assistants to create a discretionary fund that she would use to buy personal items, forcing them to donate to the TPP and of registering staff as full-time, even though they held other jobs at the time.
Interestingly, the latest accusations come from the man who used to be the TPP’s Hsinchu party head, and was their candidate for Zhubei mayor before losing his party credentials over drunk driving allegations. It smells of revenge.
Kao insists she is innocent and that nothing illegal had taken place. So far, no verdicts have been issued against her.
Potentially existential race for TPP
If this race is of critical importance to the DPP, it is potentially existential for the TPP. Up until this summer, the TPP had three and a half star politicians: TPP founder and Chair Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), Legislator Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如), Ann Kao herself and the half star being Taipei mayoral candidate Vivian Huang (黃珊珊), who is not actually a member of the party, but is widely associated with it.
Tsai Pi-ru also got caught up in a thesis scandal, and had to resign as a lawmaker. If Ann Kao loses Hsinchu due to scandal, her political star will also be tarnished.
It gets worse, the accusations against Kao regarding her legislative staff are also being alleged against the entire 5-member TPP legislative caucus, threatening to cause serious damage to the party. None of the other TPP candidates for top posts, aside from Kao, look like they have any chance to win.
All put together, it’s very possible that Kao winning in Hsinchu is all that stands between the party becoming a one-man band in Ko Wen-je. Like with James Soong (宋楚瑜) and the last party to seriously make a run at being a major player, the People’s First Party (PFP), that’s a recipe for disaster.
So, who will win?
A lot can happen between now and election day, but Kao may yet pull it off. In the beginning, the KMT’s Lin came out strong, but his campaign has faltered since.
Kao’s support had been growing, but the latest allegations caused it to stall, but not weaken…so far. The DPP’s Shen’s support was between that of Lin and Kao, and some momentum seemed to be moving her way, closing the gap on Kao.
Kao, with her tech background, is very popular with younger voters. There are also rumors that the KMT is tacitly backing her, which Lin denies.
While both deny backing Kao in this election, she had a very public meeting with the KMT’s Hsinchu County commissioner, and appeared on stage with Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕). The KMT has called for unity behind Lin, but suspicions remain that some in the party would prefer her to the DPP’s Shen.
If no more allegations surface, this election will probably come down to who undecided voters choose, and how many strategic “dump-save” KMT voters Kao can peel off. Shen, with fewer allegations against her, probably has the edge with undecided voters and the Kao campaign needs to try and secure KMT votes from the weakened Lin campaign.
I think this one is going to be close, and either candidate could pull it off. I think, though, that Kao retains the edge.