The opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won three out of four seats up for grabs in Saturday's legislative by-elections but tasted its sweetest victory in Taoyuan County. Analysts said Taoyuan County has been traditionally dominated by the ruling Kuomintang-led pan-blue camp, with the blue majority even more pronounced in the county's Chungli City. In previous elections, the pan-blue camp could be assured of easy victory as long as it could remain united. But DPP candidate Huang Jen-shu, a first-time runner for the legislative seat, beat Chen Hsueh-sheng, a former KMT legislator, by a slim margin of just 2,763 votes to make his mark in the legislative by-election. When choosing its candidate in the Taoyuan County primary, the KMT had to persuade Chungli Mayor Yeh Pu-liang, who was leading in opinion polls, to drop out of the election because of his involvement in a government procurement scandal. It then nominated Chen, who ranked third in the public opinion polls. However, the KMT was unable to dissuade two other KMT members -- Wu Yu-tung and Lin Hsiang-mei -- to bow out of the race and the two insisted on running, effectively splitting the KMT vote and spelling disaster for Chen. Chen had to face attacks from both inside and outside the KMT right from the beginning of the campaign. He failed in his re-election bid in the 2004 legislative election and failed again to get the KMT's nomination in the Kaohsiung mayoral election of 2006. He was invited to serve as top cultural official by Vice Premier Eric Liluan Chu, then Taoyuan magistrate, in 2007. Although Chen stayed in Taoyuan for three years, he engaged himself mostly in cultural affairs and his connections with the locals could not match those of the other candidates. He also had to fight his rival's publicity campaign which made hay of his position as an 'outsider, ' leaving him to fight a hard battle to the very last minute. Huang has served as a four-term county councilor. Although he has no brilliant academic or career record and cannot speak eloquently, he has served at the grassroots level for over 20 years and has good credibility. 