The Race for the Áras (4 page)

Norris would admit later that ‘Thursday had been a difficult day for me and my supporters.' He still claimed the support of three hundred campaign volunteers, but political observers would question the belief of his director of communications that time was on Norris's side and that he would be able to turn the campaign around.

Norris would tell the
Irish Times
that he had engaged in an academic discussion on sexual relations between older men and younger men and boys arising from classical Greek literature.

As the latest resurrected article was republished, Norris appealed directly to his electorate, scrambling to regain ground.

He had been speaking to the recipients of the Fingal Centre awards at the Tailors' Hall, near Christ Church, another diverse event on the campaign trail. He explained that, from 14 March, when he formally launched his campaign,

On Sunday 19 June, as the Labour Party met to elect its nominee, the
Sunday Independent
published its opinion poll commissioned from Quantum Research. Support for Norris had not diminished with the
Magill
controversy. He topped the poll, with 30 per cent support, more than twice that of Pat Cox, his nearest rival. Cox—a former
TD
,
MEP
and president of the European Parliament—and Finlay were at 13 per cent each. Michael D. Higgins and Gay Mitchell scored 11 per cent, while Mairead McGuinness won 9 per cent, Mary Davis 7, Seán Gallagher 4 and Kathleen O'Meara 2.

While Norris still had not secured the necessary twenty Oireachtas nominations, the independent Dublin
TD
Finian McGrath urged support for Norris.

The following Thursday an
Irish Independent
/Millard Brown Lansdowne opinion poll showed that Norris was still the public's favourite, with a 21 per cent rating—a drop in approval but a heartening result after all the controversy he had endured. But he still had not secured a nomination.

Higgins scored 19 per cent (the same percentage that the Labour Party achieved in a national approval ratings), while Mairead McGuinness was ahead of her party colleagues as Avril Doyle joined the race and was assessed by voters. McGuinness achieved 10 per cent and Cox 7 per cent, with Doyle picking up 3 per cent and Mitchell 2 per cent. Among the independents, Gallagher was leading, with 6 per cent, while Davis was on 4 per cent and O'Dowd on 3 per cent.

On a separate question—which of the Fine Gael candidates would be best positioned to win the Presidency—McGuinness came out on top, with 26 per cent, while Cox won 19, Mitchell 14 and Doyle 9.

A few days later, on the 24th, the
Sunday Independent
published the result of another opinion poll, showing Norris at 42 per cent, Mitchell trailing him at 21, Higgins at 16, Davis at 11 and Gallagher at 10.

In the same paper Miriam O'Callaghan, presenter of
RTE
's ‘Frontline' programme, again dismissed rumours that she had been approached and was considering running for the Park. ‘It's a story that just won't go away,' she complained.

On Wednesday 20 July, despite still not having a nomination from four local authorities or the support of twenty Oireachtas members, Norris remained the voters' favourite to win the race for the Áras. That morning's
Irish Times
/Ipsos
MRBI
opinion poll showed him scoring 25 per cent. Mitchell came a close second, at 21 per cent, Higgins at 18, Gallagher 13, Davis 12 and the undeclared candidate Éamon Ó Cuív 11.

The pollsters also asked voters to rate the qualities they considered most important in the next President. A total of 38 per cent said that a candidate who could represent the country well was the most important. Honesty and reputation came second, with 17 per cent, while 9 per cent opted for personality. Ominously for a candidate who was a
TD
, senator or
MEP
, the poll had only 3 per cent believing that a candidate's political experience was the most important factor.

The opinion poll also showed that Norris was attracting cross-party support, with his strongest support coming from people in the 35–49 age group.

Mitchell's support was strongest in Dublin and weakest in Connacht-Ulster, which was the opposite of Ó Cuív, who could only muster 4 per cent support in the capital. However, Mitchell was winning the support of only half of Fine Gael voters—a cause for real concern for head office. Higgins was strongest in Munster and Connacht-Ulster but, like Mitchell, was getting the support of less than half the declared voters. Davis and Gallagher had an even spread of support among all classes and age groups, but Davis was sweeping up more Fianna Fáil votes than Gallagher.

 

Within hours Norris was going to find his political support and his hopes for the Áras rapidly slipping away. On Friday 29 July the Norris campaign came crashing to the ground as his director of communications, Jane Cregan, and director of elections, Derek Murphy, resigned, feeling let down by Norris after he had failed to disclose a plea for clemency that he had written for his former lover.

In the blogosphere and on the net, the conviction in Israel of Norris's former lover, Ezra Yizhak Nawi, in 1997 for having sex with a fifteen-year-old Palestinian boy—statutory rape—in 1992 was resurrected. Norris had provided Nawi with a character reference and had written a substantial letter pleading for clemency on Seanad Éireann notepaper.

There was a storm of comment in the social media, and its significance was not lost on the savvy ‘Team Norris'. They had put a lot of effort into building an online campaign for Norris, with a regularly updated and lively web site and with constant conversations on Facebook, where he had thirty thousand fans and twenty thousand Twitter followers. The following day another ‘Team Norris' member, the youth organiser Orla Foley, resigned from the campaign.

In an effort to limit the damage, Norris gave the
Sunday Independent
a copy of the letter he had written fourteen years earlier. He also provided a copy of a character reference he had written for Nawi, which he signed ‘Senator David Norris, Bureau Member, Irish Foreign Affairs Committee'. The story, and an exclusive interview with Norris, was splashed over five pages in the 31 July edition.

Norris's lengthy letter, on Seanad notepaper, was written to the judges of the Israeli High Court and pleaded for mercy for his former lover, who he had known for the previous twenty-three years. According to Norris, the letter was given to Nawi's lawyers to use as they felt appropriate, and it suggested that they could forward it to the court if they felt it appropriate. In the letter he said:

The lengthy and detailed ‘humble plea' asked for a non-custodial sentence for his ‘close and personal friend', who he had first met in December 1975. Listing mitigating factors, he said Nawi had ‘unwisely pleaded guilty' and had been the victim of a violent and abusive father. He also questioned the behaviour of the police, claiming that the arrest ‘took place in a curious and troubling manner.' The circumstances were deeply worrying, he said. ‘Mr Yizhak was lured into a carefully prepared trap.' Norris volunteered to inform the court about Nawi's character and about the legal system and its similarities to Irish law.

Interviewed by John Drennan, Norris made an implicit admission that he had made a major political error. Of Nawi's conviction he said:

According to Drennan,

In a compelling story, Norris said that when the full truth emerged he was shattered. ‘But when you see someone drowning and their head surfaces, you don't push it back under. You pull them ashore and you confront them with what they have done.' He said the furore and ‘the secret internet campaign' that sparked it was ‘guilt by association. I am not Ezra. I have never lived his lifestyle. I loved him. But it has been many people's fate to love people who have defects.' But he said he intended to continue his campaign. ‘I'm not hiding behind shadows. I have to take it on the chin and reassure people all over the country that I'm the same person I was last week.'

However, Norris's worst fears were being realised. Political support was wavering, maybe even slipping away from his candidacy. Two senators, Prof. John Crown and Mary Louise O'Donnell, publicly called on him to issue a statement clarifying the controversy. Later Senator Jillian van Turnhout, who withdrew her support for Norris, would post on her Facebook page about the ‘constant barrage' of calls and emails, ‘some abusive and it now feels like harassment'.

 

Meanwhile a different letter was dropping through letterboxes around the country. The Fianna Fáil
MEP
Brian Crowley had written to every party
TD
, senator and
MEP
asserting that the party was capable of conducting a successful campaign with him as candidate. ‘I believe I have the character and competence to communicate that spirit which defines our country, our people and our history,' he said. He referred to previous conversations he had had about the office with Micheál Martin and to his agreement with him not to make any public statement until the party decided its strategy on whether to run a candidate. ‘However, we are now in the run-up to decision time in early September and many of you have asked me to reconfirm my position, which is the reason for this correspondence.'

Crowley (47), from Bandon, Co. Cork, the son of the former West Cork
TD
and senator Flor Crowley, was paralysed from the waist down at the age of sixteen after he fell off a roof on which he had been playing rugby with friends. He always had an interest in music and in politics, often travelling to meetings with his father. He volunteered as a late-night
DJ
on the
WKLR
pirate station with the programme ‘Brian Rogers and the 25th Century', earning him the nickname ‘Buck' for a long time.

Albert Reynolds, the Taoiseach of the day, made him one of his Seanad nominees in 1993, saying,