With the Taipei mayoral race heating up, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has been caught mobilising 5,300 people for the inaugural rally of Puma Shen's campaign headquarters — negative news for the image of Shen, who has made "organic popularity" a central selling point.

• Hsu Fu, a Taiwan People's Party (TPP) city council candidate, made public a quota sheet from the DPP's Taipei chapter assigning mobilisation targets, calling on legislators, city councillors, borough chiefs and others to muster 5,300 attendees.
• Hsu questioned why large-scale manual mobilisation was needed to fill the venue, given claims that tickets sold out online within seconds and that members of the public could not get in.
• Wu Pei-yi, chair of the DPP's Taipei chapter, did not deny the document, saying this was the customary promotional practice for campaign headquarters launches by mayoral candidates in past elections.
• TPP chairman Huang Kuo-chang instead came to his rival's defence, saying there was nothing wrong with traditional parties mobilising in this way, and took the opportunity to promote his own party's 4 October rally in support of Li Si-chuan.
• Another media commentator warned that making an issue of the mobilisation could end up spurring Green camp supporters to turn out in even larger numbers.

Outlook: With less than two months to go before the nine-in-one elections, mobilisation efforts and verbal sparring over the Taipei mayoral race will only grow more intense.