Changhua 1 DPP nomination

Solidarity.tw has a fantastic summary of the race for the DPP nomination in Changhua 1. This is such a rich factional struggle. Most of us don’t really care about factional affiliations; what we care about is which policies a given candidate will try to pursue. However, for insiders, the exact content of the spoils are less important than which group of people is in control of distributing those spoils. Anyway, I get a kick out of Chen Chin-ting 陳進丁 warning that Lin Yi-pang 林益邦 is not sufficiently “pure” enough of a DPP member since Lin just joined the party. Beware of turncoats! By the way, does anyone remember what Chen was doing during the Chen presidency? Oh yeah, he was an independent legislator who usually voted with the blue camp. It reminds me of immigrants in the USA who demand tighter controls on immigration. “I’m already in. We should close the doors now.”
The other factions are also very concerned that New Tide is too dominant. One of them seemed to insinuate that the nominees in the other three Changhua districts are all New Tide. (I don’t know if this is correct.) Going back to the 1980s, the traditional split in the Changhua DPP is the New Tide faction (led by Weng Chin-chu 翁金珠 and, to a lesser extent, Hung Chi-chang 洪奇昌) and the Yao Chia-wen 姚嘉文 faction, which was nationally allied with the Welfare State Alliance. During the Chen era, Chiang Chao-yi 江昭儀 was a prominent member of the Justice Alliance. These days, county magistrate Wei Ming-ku 魏明谷 is from New Tide. If they also win several legislative seats, you might understand how the other factions might start to feel marginalized.
What a wonderful mess! As Solidarity.tw points out, this district is increasingly green. If the DPP can manage to unite around one candidate and win this district, it has the potential to hold this seat for the next generation.