Photo/Illutration Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike speaks at a news conference on June 7. (Natsuno Otahara)

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike plans to soon announce her intention to run for a third term in a race that will pit her against opposition lawmaker Renho and several other rivals, sources said.

Koike, 71, is expected to declare her candidacy during a plenary session of the Tokyo metropolitan assembly that closes on June 12, the sources said.

Official campaigning for the July 7 Tokyo gubernatorial election will start on June 20.

Tomin First no Kai (Tokyoites First), a regional political party for which Koike serves as a special adviser, Komeito’s Tokyo metropolitan assembly members and mayors of 52 wards and other municipalities in Tokyo asked the governor on May 28 to seek re-election.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s Tokyo chapter also decided to support Koike in the election on June 10.

Renho, 56, an Upper House member of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, Toshio Tamogami, 75, a former chief of staff of the Air Self-Defense Force, Shinji Ishimaru, 41, a former mayor of Akitakata, Hiroshima Prefecture, and many others have announced their candidacies.

Renho advocated an “anti-LDP politics” platform in challenging Koike, who was a long-time LDP lawmaker before she became Tokyo governor in 2016.

The LDP decided not to field its own candidate in the Tokyo election because a political fund scandal has battered its popularity. A string of candidates supported by the LDP have recently lost in both Diet and local elections.

At a meeting on June 10, the LDP’s Tokyo chapter left the decision on how to back Koike to its executives, apparently due to the party’s tarnished image.

“I think the governor’s side has its ideas (about specific support measures),” Lower House member Koichi Hagiuda, who chairs the Tokyo chapter, told reporters after the meeting.

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