The Race for the Áras (17 page)

On
www.thejournal.ie
, via Twitter, there were comments that ranged from entertained to outraged and deeply sceptical. Fitzpatrick tweeted:

Darragh Yay Doyle on Facebook unearthed a startling reference.

Mícheál O'Neill on Facebook was pithy: ‘Is that “Gay Pride at home”?'

On the campaign trail in the sprawling Blanchardstown Shopping Centre, west of Dublin, Mitchell, accompanied by the former Taoiseach John Bruton, was again asked when he would release copies of the letters he sent pleading for the lives of two men on death row in the United States. The cases of the double killer Paul Jennings Hill and the murderer and rapist Louis Joe Truesdale had followed him around since Norris had quit the race for the Presidency. Mitchell ‘just doesn't have time to dig back through his extensive files; he's been putting out several dozen letters a week for the past thirty years,' said his campaign spokesperson, who reiterated that Mitchell did not condone their crimes and that he was solely motivated by his opposition to the death penalty. ‘Gay Mitchell is implacably opposed to the death penalty, always and everywhere. He is in the company of Amnesty International, Mary Robinson and others.'

Mitchell's record on the death penalty was consistent. He had previously objected to the Nigerian ambassador in Ireland in 2002 over the sentencing to death by stoning of a woman, Amina Lawal, under Sharia law. Her death sentence was overturned the following year. In another campaign four years earlier he had handed in a letter of opposition to the American embassy to coincide with the execution of the 500th prisoner in the United States since 1976, Louis Joe Truesdale.

Justin Moran of Amnesty International had given Mitchell his support, saying the organisation was in favour of politicians campaigning with them on the issue. ‘In general, we absolutely encourage people like Gay Mitchell to raise their support for the abolition of the death penalty in the
USA
or other countries.'

In the
Irish Independent
, Michael Brennan, the paper's deputy political editor, asked Higgins's spokesperson if the candidate had sent similar letters. ‘No specific letters come to mind, but any action taken would have been in the context of human rights campaigns, or joint decisions by the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee,' she replied, adding that, although Higgins had been a lifelong supporter of Amnesty International and other groups opposed to the death penalty, he had not made any representations in any criminal or civil court case. ‘He may have, from time to time, made representations to prison authorities regarding the welfare of individual prisoners on matters such as the provision of literacy services or other training services.' Ironically, both Mitchell and Higgins, as Dáil deputies, had served on the same Oireachtas committee when Mitchell chaired it.

 

At seventy years of age, Michael D. Higgins revealed that his ‘rock and roll' years were over when he talked to the political correspondent of the
Star
, Catherine Halloran. He said he had given up the booze two years earlier and replaced it with yoga as he coped with early mornings and late nights writing speeches. But rock and roll didn't translate into having skeletons in his cupboard.

Not exactly rock and roll, but the iconic folk singer and social campaigner Christy Moore had also been asked by friends to consider standing. But he ruled himself out, saying he was supporting Michael D. ‘He is a cultured man who has negotiated a difficult road in politics,' Moore said. He said he had always made decisions and stuck by them, ever since an
IRA
te bank manager had told him, as a junior member of the staff, that it was ‘inappropriate' for clerks to sing in pubs, prompting him to opt for a life of music. ‘He told me that I had choices to make, and I made them.'

The
Star
also revisited a brief comment by the colourful former Kerry South
TD
Jackie Healy-Rae the previous April. Healy-Rae, ten years older than Higgins, told Kerry Radio at the time that he was ‘definitely considering it anyway, and that's no joke.'

‘What now?' he was asked. ‘I've changed my mind about it: I've ruled myself out. Yerra, there would have been too much hassle involved in it for me.'

 

While Higgins was happily talking about his earlier years, Mitchell was being taken to task for his. Trócaire, the Catholic overseas aid agency, had organised a conference in 1998 to which Mitchell was invited as a Fine Gael
TD
. Speaking about abortion, Mitchell read out the testimony of a survivor of a German death camp who had witnessed ‘gas chambers built by learned engineers, children poisoned by educated physicians, infants killed by trained nurses, and women and babies shot and burned by high-school and college graduates.' He then walked into a controversy by saying that ‘the above quote in relation to the concentration camps could easily apply to the millions of abortions which needlessly take place year after year.'

Thirteen years later Mitchell was held to account over those comments. He would also refer to his continued donations to Trócaire later in the campaign as he took another candidate to task over how they spent their money.

A spokesperson for Mitchell said he remained an unequivocal opponent of abortion but did not support anything that put the life of the mother in danger and ‘wouldn't use such emotive language now, particularly in deference to the Jewish community.'

On
LM
/
FM
radio, which covers Cos. Louth and Meath and a huge commuter belt in north Co. Dublin, he pledged to release—if he could find them—copies of the letters he had sent pleading for the lives of the two notorious criminals. ‘In particular, I don't think I know how someone who's pro-life can take somebody else's life. I think that's absolutely outrageous,' he said in the course of the interview.

The blogosphere and Twitter erupted again. Abusive and crass anonymous comments characterised much of what passed for discourse or debate. However, on politics.ie one contributor, Ciarán Ó Raghallaigh, provided some perspective on the controversy:

Among the dozens left on that one forum, ‘Cpm' commented:

Mitchell was contacted by the
Irish Independent
, seeking his reaction to comments from the retired Fianna Fáil
TD
Ben Briscoe. Briscoe, like his politician father, Bob, was well connected to the Jewish political caucus in the United States, where both had raised political funds. When Briscoe retired in 2002 to his home in Co. Kildare, at the age of sixty-eight, he had served as a Fianna Fáil
TD
for thirty-seven years. He had followed faithfully in the footsteps of his father, a Dáil deputy from 1927 to 1965 and twice Lord Mayor of Dublin, but he had minimal contact with the party since his retirement.

Mitchell, Briscoe's constituency colleague, had served Dublin South-Central since 1981, and both had served on Dublin City Council and had been Lord Mayor. Asked his opinion on the election race by the
Irish Independent
, Briscoe was forthright: ‘What was done to Gay Byrne was disgusting. He didn't know what he was getting into. It was a very bad call by Micheál Martin.' But whatever the political anoraks cared about Briscoe's attack on the party leader, his subsequent comments were to prove incendiary to Fianna Fáil members. He was asked who he would support in the race for the Áras now that Gaybo had been ‘badly treated' and had pulled out of the race. ‘I'm backing Gay Mitchell,' he said, ‘because I served the people of Dublin with him for more than twenty years.'

A spokesperson for Mitchell was quoted in the following day's press as welcoming Briscoe's support and claiming that many grass-roots Fianna Fáil supporters were backing his candidacy. The comment was a straightforward bid for number 2s—an appeal across party lines that were defined by the Civil War.

Fianna Fáil bit their tongues and issued no official comment. However, Briscoe's mould-breaking endorsement of an opposition party's candidate provoked a storm of abuse and negative comment from party members on Twitter and on a Fianna Fáil internet discussion group.

 

Alison O'Connor, a columnist with the
Irish Independent
, offered the opinion that Gay Byrne had done the right thing in pulling out of the race and in doing what he was best at: being a broadcaster. She also set out the case for Micheál Martin's intervention in trying to get Byrne on board.

The madness of the silly season was to abate over the coming week, with the candidates continuing their low-key ground war in the constituencies and with minimal national news coverage. The two big beasts, Byrne and Norris, were off the stage. Mitchell was dealing effectively with comments he had made more than a decade earlier, and his promise to release the two letters seeking clemency for convicted criminals on death row in the United States seemed to guarantee that there was no smoking gun or further controversy in their content.

The two independents, Davis and Gallagher, also campaigned outside the capital and were more effective in the use of social media, constantly tweeting and updating their Facebook and web sites with photographs and text.

Another retired politician, Ivan Yates, had been the youngest politician in the Dáil for three terms as a Fine Gael
TD
for Wexford and as a former minister. His Celtic Bookmakers chain of more than forty shops throughout the country, employing 230 people, had gone into receivership earlier in the year. He presented the morning news programme on Newstalk, the rival to
RTE
's ‘Morning Ireland'.

On Thursday 18 August he wrote his regular political opinion column for the
Examiner
. The campaign had been receiving ‘hyperactive media attention', he said. The media were building up the candidates only to knock them down.

Then, provocatively, he examined the campaign credentials of the candidates and cast doubt on Gay Mitchell's ability to reflect and gain support from the high standing of Fine Gael in the opinion polls and from its recent historic general election victory. This was to be blunt language from Yates, who had been Minister for Agriculture from 1994 to 1997, at the same time as his party colleague Mitchell held the role of Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach and Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs with Special Responsibility for European Affairs.

Yates was equally tough on the other candidates. Because of a bad back problem he often conducted interviews in the studio standing up rather than sitting across from his guests. A large man with a large voice and a unique interviewing manner, he could be at the least an unusual experience, and even an intimidating one, to any but the most experienced and self-confident guests.