Feel the Ko-mentum!

Third-party candidate Ko Wen-je has been surging into second place in the polls by going into Gadfly Mode. But can serving up straight-talk take him all the way to the top?

Ex-Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party presidential candidate Ko Wen-je

Ex-Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je has what he calls “shark theory”. “Reporters are like sharks,” said Ko all the way back in 2020, “they will constantly attack you no matter what. The only way to escape is to swim faster than the sharks.” What he means is rather than dodge the press or become defensive, Ko’s strategy is to “outpace” the press (and his gaffes) by constantly throwing out new topics.

While Mayor Ko’s “shark theory” is pretty much the opposite of how you survive an actual shark attack, it does seem to be working for him really well in his presidential campaign as the candidate of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). In the polls by RWNews published June 14th, the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Lai Ching-te and the Kuomintang’s (KMT) Hou You-yi both stayed pretty stagnant, while undecided broke majorly for Ko, taking him for the first time above 30%.

Ko’s popularity amongst the youth vote is especially stunning. In the under-40 demographic he is by far the most popular candidate with support over 50%. Since then, a spate of other polls came out, including one by the pan-Blue TVBS that actually put Mayor Ko on top!

“My opponents are beating themselves up”

Mayor Ko will be the first to tell you that he can’t take all the credit for his recent surge in popularity.

“I really don’t have a strategy besides standing up to take the hits day after day,” said Ko. That ability to withstand the pummeling by the press becomes a strategy in and of itself when his rivals in the established KMT and DPP found themselves beset by scandal.

For Vice President Lai, the damage was not directly to himself but his party, which found itself at the epicenter of Taiwan’s #metoo movement, which finally broke into the mainstream, triggered in part by a Netflix drama about Taiwanese politics called “Wavemakers.” In the show, the sympathetic supervisor the harassed young staffer confided in encouraged her to get justice, saying “this time we can’t just let it go, OK?” In reality, multiple DPP staffers alleged they were shut down in the most cruel and bizarre manner by their bosses, including one who questioned why she didn’t just “jump out of the car” when she was inappropriately touched — she was in a moving vehicle on the highway.

You know it’s bad when they have to make a table. Things said by the supervisor to the victim include “so? What do you want me to do about it?” “So why didn’t you jump out of the car? Why didn’t you call out?” The table goes up to 12 victims.

Lai might feel unlucky enough to be collateral damage for what is his party’s institutional failures, especially since they are kinda Taiwan’s societal failures too. But the KMT’s Hou must feel completely cursed! He was hit with a swirling scandal that alleged tots in in New Taipei City where he is mayor had been drugged while at kindergarten. The whole thing turned out to be “oolong”, which is what we call a mix-up in Taiwan. Testing showed that no kindergarteners were actually drugged despite parents hysterical that this had been the case. But by then the rumors had been bubbling for weeks and Hou roundly condemned as an irredeemable thumb-twiddling bum who won’t protect children.

“What did I do in the past month? Nothing! They’re the ones who keep beating themselves up,” quipped Ko to the press in his signature mix of humility and boastfulness.

Full Ko-urt Press

Unlike the other two candidates, who limited themselves to shorter, more controlled engagements where they often comes across as stiff and scripted, Ko throws down with all comers. He went on a tour of the US, then of Japan, then he came home and went on every interview format show that would have him. The result often makes for enthralling video.

If you speak Mandarin my favorite ones are when he went on an interview with anchor Grace Liao.

“Why are the Chinese so courteous towards you?” Liao said when questioning Ko on cross-strait relations, with barely-veiled insinuation that he’s too much of a pandahugger.

“Well they dislike the DPP and they don’t respect the KMT,” Ko cheerfully replied, “I guess somebody has to be Number One!”

“Do you think everybody sucks but you?” “Aren’t you simplifying things too much?” “What do you mean by short-term political manipulation?” “Why are the Chinese so nice to you?” “How can you not know?” “Do you think you can do better than Tsai Ing-wen?” “Did you deny that right away?”

On yet another streaming online show, this time with a friendlier face, Ko invited veteran journalist Huang Wei-han to be his head of the Government Information Office. A generous offer! But Huang had to awkwardly inform Ko that the Government Information Office, once nicknamed “the government’s makeup artist,” was abolished in 2012. The same off-the-cuff ease that allowed Ko to disarm Liao’s hostility paradoxically made him look like an ass in front of Huang.

“Ko Wen-je has mastered the ‘seven-harm fist,’” Huang analyzed separately. The ‘seven-harm fist’ is a mythical Wuxia attack that deals 70% damage to your opponent…but only by dealing 30% damage to yourself first.

Ko: “Come be my head of the Government Information Office!” Huang: “I’m sorry Sir! I’d love to but 2012 called and wanted its cabinet-level position back!”

What he means by that is, there are certain thorny issues in Taiwanese politics such as Diaoyutai sovereignty and Fukushima waste water that no politico dare comment on without multiple drafts by multiple staffers to make sure they’re not triggering any “sensitivities.” Meanwhile, Ko appears to be saying whatever comes to his mind. On Diaoyutai: “The priority is to make sure our fishermen can catch fish there.” On Fukushima waste water release: “If the Japanese consider it safe, why shouldn’t we?”

It’s not that people are not offended by what he says…they are…all the time. But for voters who are tired of artful dodging by politicians on those topics, Ko can come across as a breath of fresh air. Many cite the fact that he’s not afraid to geek out on policy as proof that he’s the only presidential candidate that “does his homework.”

There is an interesting way in which being gaffe-prone can make you gaffe-proof. Paradoxically, it’s always the most careful politicians, like Hou, who are punished the most mercilessly by the press and the public for the slightest missteps. Meanwhile Ko takes the hits and keep on trucking.

Ko the Executive vs. Ko the Candidate

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been completely election-brained already ahead of 2024’s presidential election (the big event is January 13). The fact that I am terminally online probably makes me more bullish on Ko than I would be otherwise. After all, candid interviews seem to be his strong suit. But we’re electing an executive, not a talk show host and I did not live in Taiwan back when he was mayor of Taipei.

I asked my favorite Taiwanese politics explainer Donovan Smith what he thought of Ko’s tenure as Taipei mayor, and how his distant-third party might govern with such a steep legislative minority.

“He did appoint people across party lines did run a fiscally tight ship,” said Smith, “being in Taichung, I can’t say if he was a good mayor or not, but in the Global Views magazine polling he came in pretty low in terms of constituent approval. He is touting that he will appoint people across party lines to his cabinet and ‘unite’ Taiwan beyond the blue-green divide.”

Ko’s theory is that with a unity government, he'll be able to more effectively work across party lines in the Legislative Yuan (LY, Taiwan’s lawmaking body). There is also a pretty good chance that the TPP will hold the balance of power in the LY if current trends hold up in Smith’s opinion.

“He has some interesting ideas on balance of power and holding a multi-party conference on creating a united front on dealing with China.”

…but can he actually win?

Despite being all over the headlines and zooming in the polls, it bears repeating that Ko is still the longest of long-shots. This is because of the existing blue-green partisan divide in Taiwan. Ko maintains that this is the divide that he wants to transcend, which is why he made white the party color of his TPP, the color of no color. But most objective observers will say that he is a political chameleon who used to be “green” or DPP-aligned, and is now “blue” or KMT-aligned.

On the mayoral level, the DPP actually cannily exploited Ko’s (then) non-partisan bona-fides. By throwing their weight behind the then-independent Ko’s run and not running their own candidate, Ko was able to scoop up all green and enough light-blue votes to defeat the KMT in traditionally-blue Taipei City. But now that Ko has slipped to the blue side, the KMT is neither nimble enough politically to attempt such a feat, nor are they willing to concede the prize of a presidency, so much weightier than merely Taipei mayor.

This means Ko will compete with KMT candidate Hou You-Yi, splitting the blue vote. Even if Ko does successfully attract some light greens, the sheer brutality of first-past-the-post electoral logic suggests in a split-vote base situation, the winner will be the side with the least-cannibalized votes — meaning the DPP’s Lai, already the odds-on favorite even before Ko’s surge, can be the paradoxical winner from all this Ko-mentum.

That is UNLESS Hou continues to flag and at some point become utterly unviable as a candidate. Taiwanese voters are well-versed in strategic voting, or what they call “dump-save.” Could the staunchest “iron-blue” voters consider voting for Ko? Possibly.

I guess that’s my way of saying, time to stock up on popcorn. We have a loooooong way to go until January 13, 2024!