Hsinchu Mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅) yesterday accepted the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) nomination to run for Taoyuan mayor in the Nov. 26 local elections, saying he is ready to renew the party’s administration of the city.
His announcement came a day after the DPP’s Central Executive Committee approved a proposal from the election strategy committee to nominate Lin without holding a primary.
Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) of the DPP cannot seek re-election, as he has reached the two-term limit.
Photo: Hung Mei-hsiu, Taipei Times
Lin told a news conference that the “fair city of Taoyuan cannot go backward” and that he is ready to pick up Chen’s mantle.
He attended the conference via video link, as he is undergoing COVID-19 quarantine.
The election would not be a race between the pan-green and pan-blue camps, but a fight to defend progress, he said.
Lin and Chen became mayors in 2014 after capturing cities deemed Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) strongholds and then won re-election.
Lin said he would seek counsel from DPP leaders and voters while canvassing Taoyuan’s 13 districts.
His election campaign would be carried out in cooperation with the party’s city council candidates in a bid to secure all of the council seats in the city, he said.
Lin said that DPP Legislator Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬), and former legislators Cheng Pao-ching (鄭寶清), Huang Shih-cho (黃適卓), Huang Shier-chieg (黃世傑) and Peng Shao-chin (彭紹瑾) would support his candidacy.
Lin said his administration in Hsinchu has transformed the municipality into something more than a pass-through city.
Asked about his support for creating a special municipality by merging the Hsinchu city and county in addition to Taoyuan, Lin said that the opposition has torpedoed the proposal for the time being, but he would continue to support it.
The three jurisdictions should be integrated into an administrative region, as they already form a metropolitan area in practice, he said.
Lin said he looks forward to working with the next Hsinchu mayor to make the proposal a reality.
Lin said that his wife, Liao Yu-Shen (廖欲伸), has misgivings about his candidacy out of concern for his health and worries about KMT smear campaigns.
Liao remains firmly committed to the family’s political ideals despite these fears, he said.
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