Ling Tao: KMT's Young Politician

Ling Tao, aged 32, is running for Taoyuan city councilor in the Taoyuan District, representing the Kuomintang (KMT).

“In my district, 12 city councilors will be elected from a pool of 27 candidates– my only advantage is that my name only has two characters,” Ling jokes, but that is far from his only advantage.

Ling is one of three candidates nominated in his district to run for city councilor through the KMT’s primary conducted via phone polling. He emerged as the frontrunner with a 100.642 percent rating, benefitting from the party’s youth-friendly initiatives, which doubled his initial 20-point lead.

Though the century-old KMT has a reputation of being unapproachable to aspiring youths, Ling’s early political career is perhaps one of several exceptions in the party.

Ling became politically involved in 2011, during his senior year at the National Chengchi University. After hosting a series of intercollegiate debate competitions, he was recruited by President Ma Ying-jeou’s reelection campaign. There, he worked on the campaign’s youth policy initiatives.

After Ma was reelected in 2012, Ling ran for the KMT Youth League director. The director of the KMT’s youth department has a reserved voting seat in the party’s central committee, allowing Ling direct involvement in the party’s decisionmaking body.

In 2014, Lin was presented with the opportunity to join the staff at the Presidential office, but he took up the offer to join the New Taipei City government instead. Former New Taipei Mayor Eric Chu, who is now the KMT Chairman, invited Ling to serve as his confidential secretary for any department of his liking.

“Most people assumed that I would choose the Information Department, or Tourism and Travel,” said Ling, suggesting that those departments were more obvious resume-builders, “but I knew that I wanted to join the Civil Affairs Department.”

At the Civil Affairs Department, Ling saw first-hand the implementation of policies and how they impacted every aspect of a citizen’s life: from birth, family, faith, conscription, marriage, to death. He said that it was a different perspective for a policymaker who was once involved at the national level.

In 2016, Ling was the recipient of the party’s Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Scholarship, which subsidized his education at Cornell University, where he obtained his Master’s in Public Administration. He returned to Taiwan in 2019 and worked on former employer Eric Chu’s bid for the presidential nomination in the KMT’s closed primaries.

Though Chu lost the party’s presidential nomination to former Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu, Ling stayed on his staff as spokesperson, seeing his way to the position of party chairman in 2021. Ling was later appointed as the head of the Culture and Communications Committee, the youngest to ever hold the position.

Ling’s 11-year political career thus far has been marked by a series of unexpected decisions– joining the KMT, selecting the Civil Affairs Department at New Taipei City, and staying on to serve the Chu office– that has led him to the 2022 race, where he finds himself returning to his hometown in Taoyuan.

“I’ve seen policymaking, and I’ve seen city governance,” Ling said, “but can I now act as a representative for the people and hold our government accountable? This is a role I have yet to play.”

Elected office may lie ahead for Ling, but the role of holding the government accountable is a well-rehearsed act for him. Since Ling announced his candidacy in March, he has been seen on political talk shows, at KMT press events, and on social media, criticizing the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on its national and local agendas.

On the local end, Taoyuan has become a heated battleground during this election cycle. With Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan unable to run for reelection after his second term, the race in the special municipality had already been watched closely, even before waves of plagiarism scandals forced the DPP’s original candidate Former Hsinchu Mayor Lin Chih-chien to bow out.

“DPP’s biggest problem is Lin. All the people who backed Lin; those who put up billboards with him had to have them removed. All their endorsements have come boomeranging back at them. So now when they accuse others of academic plagiarism, they have nothing to stand on,” Ling said.

The KMT has also had its own fair share of controversy in Taoyuan, with Premier Simon Chang seen as an “airlifted” candidate, a carpetbagger with no prior experience with the constituency. Ling acknowledged this but said that once campaigning began, everyone saw that Chang was the best candidate for the party.

“Chang, like me, is also a fellow Cornell alumnus. We share a vision for Taoyuan, ” said Ling, “from its development, education, globalization, and future.”

Ling believes that the city requires more substantial supervision, citing the collapsed roof at the Bade Civil Sports Center during a recent earthquake, which he sees as the city government’s oversight. He also hopes to improve the city’s connectivity through transportation and city planning, as well as quality-of-life issues such as education.

Ling sees the 2022 election cycle as “metabolic,” not only as a chance for change in representation but as an opportunity for youths to play a more dominant political role. This is the moment his generation has been preparing for, and Ling– young, prepared, and ready to take on the challenge– has answered the call, defying notions of his party being youth-unfriendly.