Taro Kono, the digital transformation minister, on Aug. 26 announced his candidacy for the Liberal Democratic Party’s presidential race in September, promising to tackle the “urgent” task of restoring public trust in politics.

Touching on the political fund scandal that engulfed factions of the ruling party, Kono, 61, said that as LDP president he would require lawmakers who fail to report political funds to give back an equivalent amount.

“While political funds in Japan are exempt from taxation, there is an obligation to report them properly,” he said at a news conference.

He also proposed ensuring transparency by digitizing political fund reports and making them available online.

“I would like to restore public trust through such political reforms. Restoring trust in politics is fundamental for advancing the policies we need to implement,” Kono said.

In the scandal, 85 incumbent lawmakers were found to have failed to report proceeds gained from fund-raising parties.

The LDP disciplined 39 individuals, including those with unreported amounts of 5 million yen ($34,700) or more over the past five years. Some senior members of the Abe faction were also punished.

Lawmakers with less than 5 million yen in unreported funds received only a warning from the party’s secretary-general.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, 67, who will not run in the LDP election, came under fire for his response to the scandal.

Kono’s firm stance on cleaning up politics is expected to help him garner support from party members critical of the scandal.

He belongs to the Aso faction, which has no members acknowleged by the party as being involved in the scandal. It is also the only intraparty faction that did not dissolve itself following the scandal.

Kono is making his third attempt to win the presidency, following his first run in 2009, when the LDP was an opposition party, and his second in 2021.

Kono hails from a prominent political family.

His grandfather, Ichiro, was a leading figure among party members in the early days of the LDP.

Kono’s father, Yohei, 87, became LDP president in 1993, when the party was in the opposition camp.

Securing the LDP presidency as well as the prime minister’s post has been a long-held goal of Taro Kono.

Kono’s career as a Diet member began in 1996, when he defied his father’s opposition and ran in the Lower House election, the first held under the single-seat constituency system.

He won his first Lower House seat in the No. 15 district of Kanagawa Prefecture, which is different from his father’s district. Since then, he has been undefeated in elections and is now serving his ninth term.

Early in his career, Kono gained attention for his outspoken nature. He even challenged his father, then foreign minister, to a debate in the Diet, and confronted powerful figures within the LDP, such as former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, 87.

Some of Kono’s policies, including phasing out nuclear power generation, contradicted the party’ stance and earned him a reputation as a maverick.

While this stance garnered some public support, it also alienated Kono from LDP members, particularly veterans.

However, after joining the Cabinet for the first time in 2015 as chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, his maverick image began to fade.

He removed his past blog posts criticizing restarts of nuclear reactors, explaining the move as a commitment to his government role.

In the 2021 LDP presidential race, Kono discarded his previous stance and stated that offline nuclear reactors confirmed to be safe should resume operations.

He did this to gain support from LDP lawmakers in the election, but eventually, Aso’s faction allowed members to vote freely.

Although Kono gained strong support from rank-and-file party members and affiliates in the first round, he lost to Kishida in a run-off, where lawmakers’ votes carry more weight.

At a news conference on Aug. 26, Kono touched upon rising electricity demand from data centers and artificial intelligence. He said that doubling renewable energy would be insufficient.

“(Building new nuclear plants) to replace aging plants could be an option,” he said.

For his third attempt to win the LDP presidency, Kono has been building relations by frequently dining with veteran members of the Aso faction, following the advice of the faction’s leader, Taro Aso, who is also the LDP vice president.

However, the funding scandal rekindled criticism against LDP factions. Kono’s decision to stay in the last remaining faction could work against his promises for political reforms.

Some of Kono’s former allies said they valued his ability to push through reforms, such as eliminating the need for “hanko” personal seals in government paperwork procedures when he was the minister in charge of administrative reform.

“If he’s serious about party reform, he needs to leave the Aso faction,” said Masaaki Taira, 57, a Lower House member who supported Kono in his previous presidential races.

Former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, 75, who backed Kono in the last LDP election, will support Shinjiro Koizumi, 43, former environment minister, in the next election.