Hey, remember when Alex Tsai 蔡正元 announced he wouldn’t run for re-election, leaving a solidly blue district wide open for any famous national KMT celebrity to simply drop in and take over? There were a few local candidates, but who cares about them? After all, have they ever even been on TV? The national speculators came, of course. Among the eight candidates who originally registered were three former legislators who didn’t think they could win in their old districts, an author, and Sean Lien’s 連勝文 puppet. After the first round of polling, four of the five realized that the local candidates that they overlooked had beaten them soundly, and they conceded defeat. However, the last former legislator, Chiu Yi 邱毅, stayed in the race. After all, with all the other “real” politicians out of the race, he would get all the support from the ideological voters while the local candidates would have to split the votes of people who cared about constituency service. Well, the final results came out this week. City Councilor Lee Yen-hsiu 李彥秀 won with 32%, City Councilor Chueh Mei-sha 闕梅莎 was second with 27%, City Councilor Wu Shih-cheng 吳世正 was third with 22%, and former legislator and nationally known TV personality Chiu Yi came in last with a mere 17%. Gee, maybe this district wasn’t so wide open for just any old KMT reject after all.
You might think that the local candidates had earned a little respect by spanking the rest of the field. Maybe not. The KMT has announced that it won’t nominate Lee Yen-hsiu right away while it determines whether it will be possible to cooperate with the PFP’s Huang Shan-shan 黃珊珊. If I were Lee, I would be furious. Remember, she actually won the nomination four years ago, until the KMT changed the rules and allowed Alex Tsai a second chance at the race. (He had originally been prohibited from registering due to a court case which was dismissed during the primary.)
Anyway, I’m pretty sure that the eventual winner of this seat will be a city councilor, not a person with national-level experience.
Frozen Garlic 
May 20, 2015 at 12:11 am |
Since the KMT and DPP are both interested in a deal with Huang Shan-shan, maybe everyone should just make a deal to run her! I must say I’d love to watch a televised debate between Lee, Huang, and Kao Chia-yu.
May 20, 2015 at 1:31 pm |
I don’t think the local DPP organization or voters would ever accept Huang as their candidate. Remember, they might have a clear alternative, since Huang Kuo-chang is considering running. If Soong runs for president, which is looking more and more likely, the local KMT and PFP candidates will not be cooperating. For the time being, I’m assuming that all this cooperation talk is empty posturing and/or wishful dreaming.
And yes, that four-way debate would be dynamite.