Ann Kao

Public opinion of Ann Kao has always been closely tied to the progress of her court cases. An information engineer who graduated from Taipei First Girls' High School, holds a master's degree in computer science and information engineering from National Taiwan University and served as a vice president at the Hon Hai (Foxconn) group, she entered the legislature in 2020 as a TPP at-large legislator, won the Hsinchu mayoralty in 2022 and was for a time seen as a rising star of the third force. In July 2024 a first-instance court sentenced her to seven years and four months in prison for corruption in a case over her legislative assistants' allowances from her time as a lawmaker, and she was promptly suspended from office and left the TPP; in December 2025 the High Court acquitted her of corruption on appeal and sentenced her only to six months, commutable to a fine, for causing a public official to make false entries in records. She then returned to office, but prosecutors have appealed to the Supreme Court and her other cases have yet to be resolved. In 2026 she is seeking re-election as an independent: in keeping with KMT–TPP cooperation, the KMT did not nominate a candidate and is backing her alongside the TPP, which has made Hsinchu City a bellwether for the alliance, while the DPP is fielding former legislator Chuang Ching-cheng, and former KMT spokesman Ho Chih-yung registered to run in defiance of the party leadership and was stripped of his KMT membership. She is campaigning on her record under the slogans "Aesthetic Hsinchu" and "Hsinchu Loves Learning," while her opponents have zeroed in on municipal controversies such as the Hsinchu baseball stadium. This year the Legislative Yuan amended the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act to loosen candidacy restrictions, so that for offenses other than corruption and other serious crimes, a person whose sentence is suspended or can be commuted to community service may still register to run once the verdict is final, a change the pan-green camp has criticized as tailor-made for particular individuals. Polls show her well ahead in the re-election race, but with her legal battles not yet over, opinion on her remains sharply divided.