ON THE CANVASS with GARRETT TUBRIDY and Cllr DERMOT LACEY:Strongly contrasting styles of canvassing took to the streets of south Dublin yesterday
IT IS political Viagra, the little family perched on sunny Ranelagh's triangle. There's the skinny young candidate in his shirt sleeves - voted the 10th sexiest man in Ireland, though he "didn't go to the party"; Tatiana, the gorgeous Colombian wife; and the cute toddler with the exotic name of SeáFelipé, grappling at his daddy's legs.
Then there are the candidate's young helpers, Joey Facer, a master's candidate in Trinity, and Elaine Stenson, a freelance journalist, who are distributing leaflets and have only to glance at a passing car for every male occupant to straighten up with a silly smile.
The leaflets could be grenades for all they care.
A passing young pedestrian does a double take. "Are you . . . ?" "Yes I am," says Garrett Tubridy wryly. Oh yes.
He also happens to be a brother of Ryan Tubridy (19th sexiest, etc) and yes, Number 10 has been getting "a lot of that" since Number 19 won the Late Lateprize.
"I'll have to change the campaign slogan from 'yes I can' to 'yes I am - and now can we can on with the campaign please'."
Some might quibble about gullible voters being swayed by the medium rather than the message but this is win-win.
The candidate is Fianna Fáil, yet (nearly) no one hurls abuse at him. Plus, the grinning car drivers all zoom off with a Garrett Tubridy leaflet grinning back up at them from the passenger seat. Next stop may well be the bin but that leaflet has as good a chance of making an impact as anyone else's.
Tubridy is a 33-year-old man in a political hurry. A former Deloitte management consultant based in several cities around the world, now tournament operations manager for European Rugby Cup (which runs the Heineken Cup), his manner is personable but with none of the fun backslapping roguery of your traditional Fianna Fáiler. His is an FF blueblood of the patrician wing.
Both grandfathers - Seán Tubridy and Todd Andrews - were FF aristocracy. His father, Dr Patrick Tubridy, was on the national executive and involved in the anti-Haughey heaves of the early 1980s. Among the few negative reactors is a woman who says coolly, "Fianna Fáil? Sorry, you're a morally bankrupt party", and keeps walking. He doesn't flinch but it's clearly not easy.
"There are things you see in the party that you don't like," he later says uneasily. "Some of it is about redefining the soul and foundations of the party. We've allowed 10 to 20 individuals to muddy the name of the party. That's not the party my grandfathers founded and they're not going to get away with it . . ."
Bertie Ahern should have gone sooner, he says honestly, when asked. "I don't think anyone should be judged on one thing but I found that hard to defend".
His big canvassing schtick is his youth, the need to look forward and "generational change".
"Our expectations are different. I wouldn't expect someone who's been a politician all his life to fully grasp the issues people are facing . . . We need new people in politics. Here it's the same people who've been around since 1977 - still with no ideas and still talking about the abolition of rates. Rates were abolished in 1979," he sighs, in a tone that places 1979 sometime in the Renaissance era.
Would you be talking about Labour's Dermot Lacey then? Well, any of them really, but yes, Lacey does bang on about the abolition of rates and, frankly, he has been around a long time.
As it happens, Cllr Lacey (49 and a quarter), is canvassing a senior citizens' apartment block in Booterstown with his sister Gerry Ashe and resident activist Noel Downey. And indeed, it is a long way from the glamour and bustle of the Ranelagh triangle.
His enthusiasm for local government is almost overwhelming in that he finds it hard to stop talking once he starts. Suffice to say he has a proud record of achievement - "the only new social and affordable housing to have been delivered in Dublin southeast was delivered by me" - and is immensely keen on unsexy things like planning enforcement bonds for developers. As for the rates business, he favours local taxation but, in the meantime, he insists the Government has nicked hundreds of millions from Dublin City Council and should darn well pay it back. And yes, it did all start with rates abolition in 1977, he says stoutly.
Doesn't that make him a bit, well, OLD? "Not in the slightest. What disappoints me most is the conservatism of young people. Even young people on the left tend to have a very old-fashioned concept of what's left and right. There is a cautiousness about them. So no, I don't feel old at all. My kids are 10 and 9 [ both fostered and adopted by Lacey and his wife Jill] and that has introduced me to a lot of younger parents."
As for Garrett . . . "I'm not too sure that Garrett is actually young. He's young in age but I'm not sure he's young in his attitudes. He's been saying that no one else has ideas since the beginning of the campaign but I haven't found a single new idea on his website. Look at mine though
. . . And he's constantly pulling that thing about change though it's not clear to me how you vote Fianna Fáil and still get change", he says mildly, as Gerry and Noel go on knocking on welcoming doors and noting problems mainly to do with security.
"A lot of people came down here from Charlemont Street and Donnybrook," says Noel, "and would know Dermot well since his days out canvassing with Ruairí [ Quinn]". "Dermot was out canvassing for Ruairí when he was about six," says Gerry. Oh dear, that IS old.
At this stage, we bump into Fine Gael councillor Paddy McCartan in possession of a garibaldi biscuit and a mug of tea. "Here's the man who's going to top the poll", says Dermot which annoys Paddy somewhat since that kind of talk could damage a man. Both agree sagely that the anti-Fianna Fáil rage is "calming a bit out there" and that the horrific Ryan report has knocked the elections off the front pages.
"I'd question the timing of its publication," says Paddy, a view Dermot wouldn't share. But the debate that should be happening is not, they agree.
Anyway, the bottom line is that Garrett isn't going to win a seat, according to Dermot. In fact, he says, Fine Gael thinks that FF isn't going to winany kind of seat in the ward. So there.
