Taichung Mayor (term ends late 2026), key KMT campaign surrogate
Lu Shiow-yen is one of the KMT's most closely watched local leaders. A former journalist who served in the Provincial Assembly and for six terms in the Legislative Yuan, she unseated Lin Chia-lung in 2018 to take over Taichung and in 2022 became the first Taichung mayor since the city-county merger to be re-elected; for years she has ranked near the top of approval surveys, and she has long been seen as a leading pan-blue contender for 2028. Yet 2026 is a year of tests for her. Her term ends at the close of the year, the KMT's Johnny Chiang and the DPP's Ho Hsin-chun are vying to succeed her, and the race is seen as a vote of confidence in her governing course. Her administration's aura has also shown cracks over the past year: in October 2025, Taiwan's first outbreak of African swine fever on a pig farm was found in Taichung's Wuqi District, the city government was harshly criticized for lapses in food-waste inspections and early reporting, and in November she bowed in a public apology and dismissed the heads of the Agriculture Bureau, the Environmental Protection Bureau and the Animal Protection Office; even so, she still received a four-and-a-half-star rating in Global Views Monthly's 2026 satisfaction survey of county and city leaders, with her personal approval ranking second among the mayors of the six special municipalities. As for 2028, an August poll of possible KMT contenders showed her in a three-way race at the top with Chiang Wan-an and Han Kuo-yu, and when she appeared on Huang Kuo-chang's livestream show on October 1, she said she had not decided whether to run, argued for uniting the opposition so that the KMT and TPP could one day govern together, and called talk of a "Lu–Huang ticket" premature. Compared with New Taipei Mayor Hou Yu-ih, whose term also ends this year and who was the KMT's presidential candidate in 2024, she has yet to be tested in a national campaign, and her reputation still rests mainly on her record in Taichung; the result of Taichung's year-end race will be the first point at which she is reassessed.
