With 65 days left before the nine-in-one local elections, the blue and green camps have moved into close-quarters combat, and Lai Ching-te's high-profile praise of Kuomintang Taoyuan Mayor Chang San-cheng is being read as a wedge tactic — pressure on the KMT, and an offensive move for the Democratic Progressive Party's own campaign.

• At a party affairs meeting in Taoyuan, Lai Ching-te lavished praise on Chang San-cheng as someone whose talents are "being wasted in a minor post" and who in theory ought to be running for president, and he again brought up how Chang travelled south repeatedly to inspect the damage at the time of the Tainan earthquake.
• In response, Chiang Wan-an acknowledged Chang San-cheng's record in office and posed three consecutive questions about who is really looking after local governments and who is "full of hostility," in a veiled reference to Premier Cho Jung-tai visiting only green-camp cities and counties.
• New Taipei has become the focus of national attention: the latest poll shows Su Chiao-hui leading Lee Si-chuan by the narrowest of margins, while the blue camp's internal polling claims that 75 percent of Taiwan People's Party supporters are on Lee Si-chuan's side.
• Chiang Wan-an went canvassing early in the morning at the Huannan Market in the green-leaning Wanhua district, where vendors responded enthusiastically; at the same time, the DPP expelled 22 members who had broken party rules by running for office.
• Formosa Chang has been targeted by a boycott from some green-camp supporters after the founder's son voiced support for Chiang Wan-an; Chen Shui-bian stepped in to urge people not to launch attacks on shops and not to add political calculation to a bowl of braised pork rice.

Outlook: The races in Taipei and New Taipei are expected to remain deadlocked, and blue-white integration along with the mobilisation of each party's core support will be decisive over the final 65 days.