Johnny Chiang

Within the KMT, Johnny Chiang has long been seen as a moderate, pragmatic member of the party establishment. A political scientist by training who once headed the Government Information Office, he has won four legislative elections since 2012; after the KMT's 2020 election defeat he took over as party chairman, lost his 2021 re-election bid to Eric Chu, and in 2024 became deputy speaker of the Legislative Yuan. Like Hung Hsiu-chu, he has held both the legislative deputy speakership and the party chairmanship, yet he has never served as the head of a local government: in 2018 he sought the KMT's Taichung mayoral nomination and lost the party's primary poll to Lu Shiow-yen by about 0.6 percentage points. His path to the nomination this time was no smoother. After months of negotiations with fellow KMT legislator Yang Chiung-ying, the nomination was settled by a party poll at the end of March 2026, which he won, and Yang went on to become senior vice chair of his campaign headquarters. The mayor he hopes to succeed is Lu herself, term-limited after two terms but still popular, who is personally chairing his campaign headquarters; that backing also pulls the city government's controversies onto him, and DPP candidate Ho Hsin-chun has kept hammering at delays to Taichung's MRT Blue Line. He still leads in most published polls, though the size of his lead varies considerably from one pollster to another. What the race will test is whether his moderate image and the glow of Lu's administration can be turned into Taichung voters' trust in him personally.