CHIBA (Kyodo) Kensaku Morita, an independent backed by half the Liberal Democratic Party members of the Chiba Prefectural Assembly, was headed Sunday night to victory in a pivotal election with national implications.
It was a bitter blow for the Democratic Party of Japan, which had hoped to use the Chiba gubernatorial race as a springboard toward victory in the next national election but ended up hamstrung by a money scandal that threatens to topple the party's leader, Ichiro Ozawa.
The 59-year-old Morita, an actor and former House of Representatives member from the LDP, was projected as the winner fairly early in the evening. Among his four independent opponents was Taira Yoshida, supported by the DPJ.