Hsieh Lung-chieh

Hsieh Lung-chieh is one of the most recognizable opposition voices in southern Taiwan, and his public image is inseparable from his personal style. A Tainan city councilor for twenty years and a fixture on political talk shows, he speaks almost entirely in Taiwanese whether questioning officials or appearing on air, and has long served as the KMT's most combative face in the DPP's stronghold; but he also carries a long record of defeats, with four failed legislative bids and a loss to Huang Wei-che in the 2022 mayoral election by roughly 388,000 votes to 434,000. Now an at-large legislator and chair of the KMT's Tainan chapter, he is running for mayor again on a platform of cracking down on "black gold" politics and rooting out corruption, has promised to serve only one term if elected, and has embraced "blue-white cooperation," pledging full support for the TPP's city council candidates. His opponent, Chen Ting-fei, has contested the same elections as him five times since 1998: in the first he drew more votes but lost out because she qualified for a seat reserved for women, and in the other four she out-polled him, winning their 2012 and 2016 legislative showdowns by wide margins. Hsieh, for his part, casts President Lai Ching-te, whose political base is Tainan and whom he once taunted with "In this life, you're the only one I'm going after," as his real opponent. He has repeatedly stirred controversy with sexist and vulgar remarks, and footage of him raising a replica handgun at a KMT Tainan chapter dinner in December 2025 drew criticism because it came shortly after a random attack in Taipei. In a city the DPP has governed since 1997, the real test of this race is how far he can narrow the gap.