Lai Jui-lung

Lai Jui-lung is inheriting the DPP's most prized municipal stronghold, and his public standing depends on how much of the credit voters are willing to give him. After university he worked as a legislative aide to Su Tseng-chang and then followed Chen Chu into the Kaohsiung city government, where as head of the Information Bureau he recruited the rock group Mayday as the city's ambassadors and brought the giant Rubber Duck to Kaohsiung; he moved to the Legislative Yuan in 2016 and drew the most votes of any district legislator in Kaohsiung in both 2020 and 2024. That record makes him the continuity candidate for Chen Chi-mai's administration, and he has laid out a blueprint for an AI industry hub built on the Asia New Bay Area. His vulnerability is that his advantage has never been decisive: in December 2025 he publicly apologized over school bullying allegations involving his child, in the January 2026 primary he narrowly won a four-way contest among legislators, and his opponent, KMT legislator Ko Chih-en, has framed the race as a showdown with the New Tide faction. Published polls vary widely: several summer surveys showed him with double-digit leads, but a few online polls in August and September were close to a tie, and voters with no party leaning also tilted toward Ko. A clear victory would be read as a renewed mandate for the DPP in its southern heartland; a narrow one would leave lingering doubts about his pull.