The Race for the Áras (19 page)

While ‘sexy' had never been a defining term for the Presidency, a reinvigoration and reinvention of the role by both women engendered a media fascination and column-inches of coverage.

Also, as part of the paparazzi endorsement, pictures at public engagements of the two President Marys had helped redefine the role as the dull and turgid pictures of the presenting of credentials of newly appointed ambassadors were complemented by pictures of a fashionable President at social and community events. Both Presidents had expanded the scope of their office outside the rigid role set by the Constitution, making it reflective of the people they represented and of an increasingly confident and aspirational country.

The Presidency, O'Hanlon contended, was all about saying nothing, however eloquently expressed.

 

In the same edition the news pages revisited Gay Mitchell's stance on abortion and quizzed his spokesperson, John Downing, who was quoted as saying that Mitchell was ‘disappointed and concerned' that more than four thousand Irish women went overseas each year for an abortion. ‘Gay would prefer they sought help here, keep the child, and that they look for help here rather than feeling obliged to sneak off for abortions overseas,' he said. The colourful phrase was used in the headline.

He added that Mitchell's views were pro-life but were ‘tempered by compassion' and that he was strongly concerned about the rights of the unborn but also about protecting the well-being of the mother.

Chapter
9
   
NON-DECLARED AT 25 TO 1

‘M
ichael D leads but 1-3 want David Norris for President', said the page 1 headline reporting on an opinion poll in the
Sunday Independent
. A sub-heading said that few people attached any negative images to him, despite controversy. The poll would send out political shock waves, igniting a new debate about Norris's decision to resign, and would also define the weaknesses and strengths of the candidates.

The Millward Brown Lansdowne poll on 4 September showed that Higgins commanded the lead, with 32 per cent of first-preference support, nine points ahead of Mitchell, followed by Norris, who had 18 per cent, despite having withdrawn from the race. It found that 34 per cent of the people asked would favour Norris re-entering the race. Jody Corcoran wrote:

Those polled were presented with a series of words with which to describe the candidates, both positively and negatively. They included
inspiring
,
proud to have
,
modern
,
trust
,
vibrant
,
honest
,
boring
,
conservative
,
uninspiring
,
old
and
unknown
(
unrecognised
).

Norris polled well, topping the poll as the most vibrant candidate, at 14 per cent, only one point behind Higgins, level-pegging at the top of the poll with Ó Muircheartaigh, tying in third place with Davis in reference to
honest
, behind Higgins and Ó Muircheartaigh, and was joint
best known
with Higgins. He barely featured when voters were asked if he was
boring
or
conservative
or even
old
.

An associate director of Millward Brown, Paul Moran, analysed the results. He explained:

The results of the opinion poll were phoned to Norris in Cyprus by his former campaign co-ordinator, Liam McCabe. Norris tweeted about the poll and sparked speculation that he might re-enter. ‘David Norris is greatly heartened by and appreciates the continued support being shown to him by the Irish public.'

One former supporter, however, the independent
TD
Finian McGrath, counselled him against returning to the race. ‘I accept there is a genuine desire among a number of people for David Norris to run, but I wouldn't back him again,' he said. ‘I think it would be the wrong decision, because I think, probably, something else would come out.'

The
Sunday Times
on the same day published another pulse-taking exercise, by Behaviour and Attitudes, which showed Higgins with a very strong lead of 35 per cent, twelve points clear of his nearest rival, Mitchell, with 23 per cent. Crowley, who had just withdrawn his name from any speculative lists, polled a respectable 17 per cent, ahead of Gallagher, with 13 per cent, and Davis, with 12 per cent. The poll was conducted using a random-dialling technique, surveying 1,001 voters in all forty-three constituencies.

 

Meanwhile in Sinn Féin there was a growing debate about running a candidate, as Fianna Fáil seemed to be about to leave the field open for a republican candidate. The following Saturday the party would meet in Belfast for its ard-fheis, where it was expected that the Presidency would be an issue for consideration.

A number of senior party figures, including the Dublin North-West
TD
Dessie Ellis and the party's chief whip, Aengus Ó Snodaigh, were putting their support behind a call from the Kerry
TD
Martin Ferris to field a candidate. The party president, Gerry Adams, and the Cavan-Monaghan
TD
, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, were understood to be uncommitted. ‘We are a growing party in this state,' Ó Snodaigh told the
Sunday Times,
‘and if there are more people looking to support us we should put somebody in the field. It has to be somebody of calibre. Somebody who held an elected position now or previously needs to be considered for a job as important as President.'

When questioned he said he didn't believe that either Martin McGuinness (Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland) or Gerry Adams could afford to leave their leadership positions. Ellis was in favour of choosing a candidate from Northern Ireland, while Paul Donnelly, a member of Fingal County Council and the Sinn Féin by-election candidate in Dublin West, suggested that Martin McGuinness, Mary Lou McDonald, the Dublin Central
TD
, or Michelle Gildernew,
MP
for Fermanagh South Tyrone and former Northern Ireland Minister of Agriculture, would make exceptional candidates.

In the same day's
Sunday Business Post
, Pearse Doherty of Sinn Féin was reported as saying that whether or not Fianna Fáil ran a candidate, Sinn Féin should join the race.

He refused to speculate on who they would consider as their candidate. ‘The only thing we can say with certainty is that Gerry Adams will not be standing.'

 

To borrow a phrase from a previous candidate, ‘on mature reflection' Gay Byrne had recently written about his decision not to contest the Presidency, and they were salutary words for all the candidates.

You could almost hear his legendary radio voice in the
Sunday Independent
. Revealing a deep hurt and disgust at how he had been treated by the media, he said:

But Kim Bielenberg in the
Irish Independent
threw a bucket of cold water over Gaybo's preciousness.

 

Mary Davis secured her first local authority endorsement when Galway County Council gave her its support. The specially convened meeting carried the motion, with fourteen voting in favour and Fine Gael councillors abstaining. She was one of six independent candidates to address the council, the others being Seán Gallagher, Dr Pat Jones, Richard McSweeney, Dermot Mulqueen and Gary Smiley.

It was the first endorsement of a candidate by any local authority and was an important milestone in the race for the Park. ‘I'm thrilled to have won the very first nomination here in Galway,' Davis said before posing for photographs in Eyre Square in front of the flared sails of the Galway Hooker installation. ‘It's onwards and upwards from here.' Sligo County Council gave her a second nomination.

Later that Monday afternoon, 5 September, Meath County Council gave its support to Gallagher. In the evening Leitrim County Council also gave him its nomination after he was proposed by an independent councillor, Enda Stenson. On his web site Gallagher posted a thank-you note to both councils and gave details of his ‘listening tour' so far: in seven weeks he had visited twenty counties and seventy towns and villages, had travelled almost 9,000 kilometres and visited more than twenty voluntary groups and charities and had spoken to more than thirty entrepreneurial groups, business networks and chambers of commerce.

Meanwhile, Mitchell was still battling with the past. Evelyn Eudy, the mother of a teenager who was shot and raped in the United States, condemned Mitchell's plea for the lifting of the death sentence for her daughter's killer, Louis Joe Truesdale, Jr. Eudy told the
Irish Independent
of her distress about Mitchell's letter. The killer was executed by lethal injection eighteen years later.

Mitchell was reported by the
Irish Independent
to be ‘incensed' when interviewed by the paper, saying he did not know how many letters he had written pleading for the lives of people sentenced to death, and he asked for other candidates to set out their position in relation to the death penalty. People should be proud to have a candidate with the ‘courage and moral fibre' to take a stand against the death penalty, he said.

On Facebook a new site was established, ‘Stop Gay Mitchell from becoming President', which espoused a liberal agenda; by the end of August it had 1,478 likes.

However, an unlikely public endorsement praised Mitchell as ‘an excellent parliamentarian, an excellent representative.' The support came from David Andrews, Fianna Fáil
TD
for Dún Laoghaire, a former Minister for Foreign Affairs and father of Barry Andrews, a former Minister of State for Children. He spoke highly of Mitchell on a visit to Galway but said that, ‘in the absence of a Fianna Fáil candidate,' he was offering his support to his lifelong friend Michael D. Higgins. ‘I'm out of politics now and I'm a very strong supporter of the Fianna Fáil leader, Micheál Martin,' he said, but he would not be drawn on whether the party should run a candidate, as he was now, he said, ‘out of the loop.'

Andrews, on the left wing of Fianna Fáil, recalled missions that he and Higgins had undertaken, including their unofficial visit to Iraq and Jordan with Paul Bradford of Fine Gael to lobby for the release of the twenty-six Irish employees of
PARC
who were being held captive by Saddam Hussein after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. He recalled their other visits two years later to Somalia and the trips Higgins had made with Andrews's brother Niall to Central America.

Mitchell was ‘in the driving seat' for winning the presidential election according to another unlikely pundit a few days later in an interview with Dublin City University's student radio station,
DCU
fm. The man who had described Mitchell as a ‘waffler' after he had clearly got under his skin and provoked a rare response in the Dáil, the former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, described Mitchell now as a ‘good friend' who would win the presidential race. ‘I'd say Mitchell definitely has it,' he told the station, saying that ‘his party is on 40 per cent of the vote, and if they run a good campaign there is no reason he won't hold his party vote.'