The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) New Taipei City mayoral candidate, Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), is to embark today on a stumping tour for fellow DPP mayoral and county commissioner candidates in a bid to garner support before the Nov. 24 elections.
Su’s first stop will be Hsinchu, where Mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅) is seeking re-election.
Su is to attend the opening of a recreational sand pit designed for parents and their children at the Nanliao Fishing Harbor (南寮漁港).
It is expected to be a heartwarming occasion as it was Su who prompted Lin, during the mayor’s election campaign four years ago, to propose transforming the harbor into “Hsinchu’s answer to New Taipei City’s Tamsui Fisherman’s Wharf.”
While Lin’s re-election prospects are good, the DPP hopes to parlay Su’s widespread popularity into stronger support ratings for the party’s six first-time candidates for Hsinchu county councilor and to get all 12 of its councilor candidates elected, party sources said.
Turning to Taoyuan, which borders New Taipei City, Su aims to shore up talks initiated between his and Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan’s (鄭文燦) teams to build a New Taipei City-Taoyuan “greater metropolis,” party sources said.
Cheng served as head of the Executive Yuan’s Department of Information Services when Su was premier and later as director of the DPP’s Department of Culture and Communications when Su was party chairman.
The two municipalities, which face several common challenges, are in effect already a greater metropolis, Taoyuan Department of Public Information Director Xavier Chang (張惇涵) said.
For example, they teamed up to monitor wastewater discharged from homes in a public housing complex by the National Taiwan Sport University Station (A7) on the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Access MRT line, after there was a public outcry in April over discharge being flushed into two Sinjhuang District (新莊) creeks that ran through both communities, Chang said, adding that this collaboration is only the first of many to come.
Su also wields influence in the south, as witnessed in the work of another of his apprentices, acting Tainan Mayor Li Men-yen (李孟諺), who has extensive experience in river remediation, party sources said.
Li last month accompanied Su to inspect the Breeze Canal (微風運河) in New Taipei City’s Luzhou District (蘆洲) along a section of the Erchong Floodway (二重疏洪道), which was prone to flooding before Li implemented measures to resolve the problem while heading the then-Taipei county water resources division under Su.
The canal has become a venue for Dragon Boat races.
Members of DPP Legislator and Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Chen Chi-mai’s (陳其邁) campaign staff have also approached Su’s team in the hopes of collaborating to identify weaknesses in the political platforms of Chen’s campaign rivals, party sources said.
Chen said he hoped to team up with Su and Presidential Office Secretary-General Chen Chu (陳菊), whose respective experience in governing New Taipei City and Kaohsiung represents a cross-section of high-quality DPP governance and could convince Taiwanese that the DPP has what it takes to govern successfully.
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