by Tom Reddy
According to O’Dowd, ‘the reality is you gotta fish where the fish are, and the only votes for me are with Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin.’ He initially met the general secretary of Fianna Fáil, Seán Dorgan, and also Mary Lou McDonald and Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin. He ruled out the possibility of getting a nomination from county councils: that was not possible for him due to time constraints, as he had to tend his business interests. He said he would announce the success of his talks. ‘I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time dilly-dallying over this decision. I will make my decision in a week or two as to whether or not I will go forward with this effort.’
O’Dowd blogged on his Irishcentral.com site saying he never thought taking the oath of allegiance when he became an American citizen would be thrown at him as something negative. There would be criticisms in the coming days about where his allegiance would or should lie after taking the oath, while the debate forgot that a previous President, Éamon de Valera, had been an American citizen by birth. O’Dowd wrote that
the presenter on Newstalk radio zeroes right in on it after a British writer for the Irish Times raised the issue. It seems a spurious argument, given that I have worked on Irish issues and have always been entirely comfortable with my allegiance to both countries. I will yield to no one my right to be Irish … Overall, it has been a fascinating experience.
He then recounted how he dealt with the Ellis article as put to him by Pat Kenny.
In the event the interview is fair but tough. The Irish Times screed by London Times obituary writer Walter Ellis accused me of being anti-British Royal family and too extreme gets an airing but I am comfortable answering the questions.
If the worst my opponents can throw at me is that I question the magnificence of the British Royal family to an audience in the Irish Republic I am on pretty safe grounds …
The major declared candidates for this job are running on lifelong resumes as politicians, several from the now discredited European Parliament. The last thing Irish people want to hear right now are politicians given the mess the country is in. There is also a dearth of ideas among those candidates, with mostly touchy feely yak yak about national conversations and kumbaya sentiments.
I take the tack that I can help with jobs, tourism and education.
In setting out his stall he said he would be a ‘travelling salesman’ for Ireland and that the role could drive more American investment in Ireland.
I don’t accept for a minute that the job is meaningless. I think it’s a powerfully uplifting office at a time when Ireland’s image abroad needs every bit of help it can get.
Ten days after he arrived in Ireland, O’Dowd had blitzed radio programmes and met representatives of Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil. After some reflection he told the media he was not going to run for the Park, saying he had stopped believing he could win. Without saying it, clearly the support was not forthcoming.
I have been given a fair hearing and am content that the issue of how the next president, with the help of the Diaspora, can help secure jobs and stop the involuntary emigration of Ireland’s young people has been raised. I want to thank those who had promised support and to give an undertaking that I will continue to work on behalf of Irish and emigrant issues in my current capacity.
O’Dowd also said he could not compete financially with the political parties.
The race costs about €480,000 to run a proper national campaign. The main political parties can easily raise that.
The logistical challenges of running for an office as an independent against established political parties is incredible. It is a complicated system which overwhelmingly favours the big guns in the main political parties such as Fine Gael and Labour. Bottom line: unless they are completely terrible candidates either the Labour or Fine Gael contender will win the race. Quite simply, I believe the race is not winnable for an independent, any independent, no matter what the current polls say.
Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin would later confirm that he had advised O’Dowd to pull out of the contest.
I strongly advised O’Dowd not to stand, because he is a friend of mine. He didn’t really know what he was letting himself in for, and, as an independent, it is difficult. It is a very undemocratic system.
Ten days later O’Dowd would write for www.thejournal.ie saying that the power elites in Ireland don’t want to acknowledge the great contribution made by Irish emigrants to their native land, because to do so would be to admit that the state has failed them.
I think we Irish abroad threaten the status quo in a way that is quite surprising even to me. The Irish Times did their readers the single courtesy of printing, unbidden, the pledge each person takes on taking American citizenship. Even though the Irish state recognises dual citizenship, the august Irish Times clearly does not.
He added that since 1840 more than half the people born in Ireland had emigrated. Their descendants make up the 70-million-strong diaspora around the world.
O’Dowd went on to quote a letter about Irish economic emigrants that Paul Hill, one of the Guildford Four, had written to him when he announced that he was not going to contest the race.
I worked with these men on the buildings of London, many lived in bedsits which were no more than hovels, yet every week the first port of call for these men was the post office, Ireland was never forgotten. Those pointing the finger today never give those men a thought as they passed away penniless on the streets of London.
O’Dowd concluded:
There is no emigrant senator, no minister for immigrant affairs, quite the contrary, a determination to block any voting rights or any real participation in the dialogue. I quickly realised the race was not winnable, running against the vastly superior firepower of the major parties who set all the rules. Like a lot of things in Ireland, I discovered the cards are held where only the insiders can deal them.
He would later endorse the Sinn Féin candidate as one of the great arbiters of the Irish peace process.
On Thursday 7 July, Phil Hogan, the Fine Gael strategist and Minister for the Environment, ‘bumped into’ Pat Cox in Dublin and posed for photographs with him for the lucky photographers who ‘happened’ to be nearby. It was seen as a set-up, despite protestations to the contrary and a clear endorsement from Mount Street for Cox’s campaign. Party sources denied that he was being shown favouritism. ‘It was a chance encounter, which should not be interpreted as support for Mr Cox’s campaign.’
Meanwhile, Avril Doyle announced that she was pulling out of the contest, saying she was ‘unlikely to secure the nomination, notwithstanding the fact that I retain the support of a sizeable number of the parliamentary party.’ She said she was acting in the best interests of the party, and that she would not be endorsing any candidate before the convention.
The Irish Independent reported that senior Fine Gael figures were contacting undecided members of the parliamentary party in the run-up to the convention. They said that head office had carried out an opinion poll and that it showed Cox and McGuinness securing 22 per cent of the vote each, with Mitchell trailing at 14 per cent. One TD said that head office was ‘terrified’ of the prospect of Mitchell winning the nomination, and that they preferred Cox but would settle for McGuinness instead of Mitchell.
Fine Gael never released the market research. However, the reported figures are believed to have shown Norris leading the field, with all three Fine Gael candidates trailing.
Twenty-one years earlier Fine Gael head office had commissioned the Market Research Bureau of Ireland to conduct an opinion poll to assess the likely candidates, including Brian Lenihan (senior) and Mary Robinson, and the potential Fine Gael candidates, Peter Barry, Avril Doyle and, its eventual candidate, Austin Currie. Any rating below 3.5 would translate into certain defeat at the polls. Lenihan topped the poll with 3.91, Robinson scored 3.7, Barry and John Wilson 2.94, Doyle 2.86 and Currie, trailing last, 2.74. Despite scoring the lowest, Currie was selected as its official—and, as it turned out, unsuc
cessful—candidate.
Convinced that he was being undermined with an opinion poll and a phone campaign, Mitchell fired off an angry letter to head office complaining about party bias and favouritism.
On Saturday 9 July, Fine Gael’s electoral college, with 650 delegates, gathered in the Regency Hotel in Whitehall, Dublin. Frances Fitzgerald, Minister for Children and a Dublin North-West TD, proposed Mitchell, saying that Fine Gael had never won the Presidency but that it could do so now. John Bruton, who had earlier withdrawn from the party’s nomination process, had signed Mitchell’s nomination papers. Mitchell told delegates that he would campaign on the four pillars of his political philosophy—‘rights, responsibilities, enterprise and social justice’—and added that ‘we need to return to a less harsh and more merciful society.’
Party delegates were still buoyed up by the result of the general election and by continuing support in the opinion polls for the party. Enda Kenny spoke to the crowded room as votes were being counted. ‘Fine Gael doesn’t have any right to this Presidency … it’s something we have to win.’ Then he momentarily forgot his own caution: ‘As we speak, the future of Áras an Uachtaráin—potentially—is being counted in the next room.’
Brian Murphy, chairperson of the Executive Council of Fine Gael, announced the elimination of Cox after he received less than 25 per cent of the first vote. By 5 p.m. he was able to announce Mitchell as the Fine Gael presidential candidate, as he had taken 55 per cent of the vote, to McGuinness’s 45 per cent.
Kenny’s face fell as the result was announced and, according to reporters, he could barely disguise his disappointment. At a press conference after the vote Mitchell revealed that he was going to take a week’s holiday before throwing himself into the campaign. Publicly rebuking him, Kenny said: ‘Take your holiday and enjoy it, because, believe you me, when you come back you better be ready for one hell of a campaign.’
Mitchell said he would attend the Patrick MacGill Summer School in the Glenties, Co. Donegal, before taking off to the Mediterranean for a week on a holiday that was already booked.
Mitchell’s strong canvassing skills and his service to the party had won him the nomination, and he wasn’t going to let the party forget how Cox had been favoured over his candidacy.
We are the hierarchy, the parliamentary party. The executive council made a very firm point. They re-established themselves and made a very firm point as to who makes the decisions.
A journalist challenged Kenny, saying he looked disappointed with the result. ‘Am I supposed to be going around grinning like a Cheshire cat at everything?’ Kenny replied tartly.
The next edition of the Phoenix had Mitchell and Kenny on the cover, with a speech bubble from Mitchell saying, ‘There’ll be a gay in the Park for sure.’ Kenny’s bubble replied: ‘But it won’t be you.’
A number of profiles of Mitchell were published in the wake of his selection. It was said in the Daily Mail that he was
the shock choice of Fine Gael as its presidential candidate; a man who, according to many in the party, achieved the nomination because he wasn’t Pat Cox rather than because he was Gay Mitchell.
Mitchell is a combative—some might even say prickly—politician with some pretty eyebrow-raising views about Ireland, including his support for a radical anti-abortionist who murdered a doctor in the US.
This was a reference to an event in 2003 when Mitchell, who consistently campaigned against the death penalty, called on the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, to spare the life of Paul Jennings Hill, who in 1994 murdered a doctor and his bodyguard because the doctor performed abortions. Hill was executed by lethal injection. Mitchell had also campaigned to prevent the execution of Louis Joe Truesdale, Junior, the rapist and murderer of a teenager.
Mitchell made the headlines again in 2010 when he invited the radical anti-abortion activist Dr Alveda King (a niece of Dr Martin Luther King) to Dublin, where she met senior members of Fine Gael, including Kenny. The Mail also reminded readers of his notorious cousin George Mitchell, ‘the Penguin’, a drug-runner and criminal who had been disowned by the family.
For Harry McGee of the Irish Times, Mitchell had the CV and history of a self-made man who had risen through the ranks of the party. McGee quoted an admirer as saying, ‘He may be prickly, but there is huge admiration for loyalty, his pedigree and what he has achieved over the past thirty years.’
However, some party handlers saw him as a nightmare candidate, with his strong views and with no cross-demographic appeal. A close supporter of Mitchell offered the opinion that
the perception of Fine Gael for fifty years was that we were too rural and too local. Now they are giving out because he is too much of a Dub and too working class. There are a number of TDs in Dublin who did not back him because there is a vestigial snobbery in the party. They give out about his attitude, but it’s they who have to change.
Chapter 6
THE PEOPLE’S FAVOURITE
The broadcaster Gay Byrne was with his wife, Kathleen Watkins, at their holiday home in the Rosses, Co. Donegal, when his mobile phone rang on Saturday 6 August. It was the Fianna Fáil leader, Micheál Martin. Martin was also on holiday, in Skibbereen, Co Cork, at the other end of the country.
Byrne had celebrated his seventy-seventh birthday the previous day. His daughters had been among the first to ring and congratulate him: Suzy, who was on holiday in France, and Crona and her husband, from their home in Killaloe, Co. Clare.
It was Crona’s phone call that had intrigued Byrne most. She told her father that during the previous week she had been ‘bombarded’ with calls from a local TD, Timmy Dooley. He had eventually arranged to meet her near his home village of Tulla, close to Ennis.
Dooley was one of six members of a sub-committee set up by Micheál Martin to explore the party’s options before the coming presidential election. Always affable, humorous and self-deprecating, and a shrewd political operator, he was well known as the eyes and ears of the leader in the parliamentary party.
As it turned out, Martin had entrusted Dooley with sounding out Gay Byrne to see whether he would be prepared to run for the Áras on the Fianna Fáil ticket. At their meeting, Dooley floated this with Crona and asked her to approach her father.
At any other time in recent Irish history, endorsement by Fianna Fáil would have virtually guaranteed the Presidency to a candidate. But these times were different. Fianna Fáil had carried the blame for Ireland’s economic meltdown, and the brand was now toxic with the electorate. In the general election a few months earlier there had been a collapse in the Fianna Fáil vote and the loss of three-quarters of its seats.
Before the general election an unprecedented number of former Fianna Fáil stalwarts, under no illusions about how they were likely to fare, had retired. Consequently, Fianna Fáil did not field a sufficient number of candidates to form a Government, even if by some miracle every one of them had been elected. In the event, the overbearingly dominant political party since the foundation of the state lost a staggering fifty-eight seats and was able to return only twenty TDs to the Dáil.
When the presidential election began to appear on the horizon, Fianna Fáil was more than €2.1 million in debt and still limping along in the opinion polls. There was a heated debate within the party about whether anyone should be selected to run at all—a previously unthinkable prospect for Fianna Fáil. If, irrespective of the party’s dire financial state, the decision was ‘yes’, who on earth should it be? Indeed, given how the party was viewed by the country, who would be brave enough?
A number of senior Fianna Fáil politicians had let it be known that they would be available if called on by the party. Senator Mary White, owner of Lir Chocolates and wife of Padraic White, former managing director of the Industrial Development Authority and a policy adviser to the party, had previously expressed an interest in running.
The MEP for the Ireland South constituency, Brian Crowley, a hugely popular vote-winner throughout Munster, had a
lso made it clear that he was interested in running, long before the vote meltdown, in an interview on ‘The Late Late Show’.
Éamon Ó Cuív, a former Minister for the Gaeltacht and Minister for Social Protection, had an eye to destiny and history and was interested in holding the same office as his grandfather and the party’s founder, Éamon de Valera.
Another former minister, Mary Hanafin, was also considered a possible late entrant for a Fianna Fáil nomination. Until a sub-committee appointed by the leadership produced its report and recommendation on the presidential race, she would continue to figure in online debates and in media speculation.
Polling carried out privately by Fianna Fáil to test the public mood showed that even the party’s biggest vote-catcher, Brian Crowley, could gain only a 9 per cent approval, such was the hostility to the party. This surprisingly poor rating showed that he could not get elected.
However, publicly the party was reserving its position. After all, it was argued, Mary McAleese had been selected only five weeks before polling day in the last presidential election fourteen years earlier, and so there was time to consider and watch events unfold.
To the many members of the party who expressed their frustration on social media about the internal decision-making process it seemed that the party was dithering. Their frustration was further heightened when their comments, supposedly made in an internal and closed forum, were quoted in the media.
As the Dáil broke for the summer recess in July, Martin appointed a six-member parliamentary committee to consider the party’s options. It consisted of himself, Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West), a potential candidate, Dara Calleary (Mayo), Niall Collins (Limerick), Timmy Dooley (Clare), Seán Ó Fearghail (Kildare South) and one senator, Darragh O’Brien (Malahide, Co. Dublin).
