EDITORIAL: Puma Shen’s waves gaining size

With candidate registration for this year’s local elections closed on Sept. 4 and the elections less than 80 days away, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator and Taipei mayoral candidate Puma Shen’s (沈伯洋) rapidly growing popularity has become the focus of political talk shows and online discussions over the past week, heating up the mayoral election race in Taipei.

Local media headlines and political pundits have picked up his supporters’ slogan “ocean current” (洋流) — a play on the last character of Shen’s name, which literally means “ocean” (洋), and the character (流), which can mean “current,” “flow” or “trend” — to describe the nationwide attention Shen has been attracting recently.

Shen on Wednesday last week launched a Taipei residents’ participation platform on Line called “Mayor, listen to me” (市長，你給我聽好了), which allows users to leave messages regarding their municipal concerns and see other users’ messages. In just two days, the platform received more than 30,000 messages, which Shen’s team are analyzing and would respond to with policy proposals next month.

The platform is a stark contrast with the style of Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安), who often evades questions or gives vague or deflective answers, not only toward questions by reporters or scrutiny from DPP city councilors. Taipei City Councilor Chin Huei-chu (秦慧珠) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) last week said Chiang had ignored her messages for two months after she publicly criticized a city official in July.

During Shen’s near-daily campaigning, visiting parks and traditional markets in the morning and occasionally night markets and shopping districts in the evening, his visit to Shihpai Hub, a shopping area in Beitou District (北投), on Thursday last week was described by local media as a political “sensation,” because the street was teeming with supporters as if it were the eve of the election.

The same day, Shen did a radio interview with prolific television producer Wang Wei-chung (王偉忠), who is widely seen as “pan-blue,” during which they had a relaxed and fluid conversation about municipal issues and various topics. The interview drew more than 1.3 million views in less than three days. Shen’s fluent and confident responses earned him praise from viewers, especially compared with Chiang’s interview with Wang four years ago when he was running for mayor. Chiang’s video has only garnered about 220,000 views after four years.

The interview was seen as a successful breakthrough for Shen in reaching out to non-DPP supporters. It gained even more attention after pan-blue supporters questioned why Wang did not interview Chiang, and the radio station responded that it had reached out to the mayor several times, but received no reply — reinforcing the impression that he often dodges questions.

Several political commentators said they saw a critical turning point in the Taipei mayoral election through Shen’s performance last week, indicating that he has genuinely become a “challenger” that poses a real threat to incumbent Chiang.

Taipei’s voter structure has long been characterized as a pan-blue stronghold, typically leaning toward the conservative KMT, so for the first half of the year, Chiang was expected to easily win re-election even without putting in extra campaigning effort. He was confident enough to travel outside of Taipei to stump for other KMT candidates and refused to endorse the party’s allied Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) city councilor candidates, prompting complaints from TPP supporters about the mayor’s “arrogant” attitude.

However, in the face of the “ocean current,” and with Chiang knee-deep in controversies — construction safety issues, an unsolved rat problem (which regained attention after a rat interrupted a baseball game at Taipei Dome on Wednesday last week), child abuse cases and reports of students with stomach problems after eating school lunches, as well as allegations of special treatment for his son in securing a US exchange program slot — and his apparent inability to respond to the city’s problems, people are seeing an opportunity for change in Shen.

Local media reported that the DPP’s internal polls have shown Shen’s approval rating is catching up with Chiang’s, with a gap of less than 10 percentage points left. Chiang might be feeling the pressure, as he appeared on stage at TPP Taipei City Councilor Chang Chih-hao’s (張志豪) event on Saturday, hinting that he needs to secure TPP supporters’ votes.

With about two months until election day, whether Shen’s approval rate can continue to grow depends on whether he can continue to find ways to make his ideas reach independent voters and even pan-blue voters, and if he can accurately grasp residents’ main concerns through his Line platform and canvassing events and come up with convincing and actionable solutions.