Not much point in having a son as a political editor, my mother noted drily, if he can’t tell me who is even going to be in the presidential election, never mind win it.
It’s a fair point, and I resolved to do better. Though as usual, not immediately.
The line-up for the election will not be completed for some weeks yet because two of the most important players, Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil, haven’t quite decided what they’re going to do. And if they have decided, they’re not telling anyone just yet.
My sense from talking to people around the country in recent weeks is that many are looking forward to the presidential contest in a way that they don’t really relish the prospect of a general election. Perhaps it’s because the stakes are simultaneously high – the chance to become the country’s first citizen – but also low: the presidency has negligible real political power and little influence on people’s actual lives. You get all the drama and colour of an election, but without the worry about the future. Either way, there seems to be great anticipation of the campaign to come.
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The list of potential candidates so far has been eclectic, to say the least. Only two are nailed down – but I would be amazed if there aren’t more. At least one; probably two; maybe three more candidates. We’ll have to get back to you (and to my mother; her first, probably) on who exactly they might be.
[ Who is Mairead McGuinness, the early front-runner in the presidential race?Opens in new window ]
So what’s going to happen? Whatever shape the 2025 campaign takes, recent political history suggests it will not be dull. The last election in 2018 was not especially exciting – but that was because you had a popular incumbent who was always likely to win. The three contests before that were among the most unpredictable and exciting election rollercoasters in Irish history. I’ve been rereading accounts of the campaigns of 1990, 1997 and 2011. I confess I had forgotten how utterly crazy the 2011 campaign was.
So as sort of an amuse-bouche for the autumn to come, here are some of the highlights of that campaign. Do you remember all this?
The Norris implosion
For a long time in 2011, the clear front-runner was the long-time campaigner for gay rights, David Norris. But then came two revelations during the summer. His campaign was derailed when comments he made in a 2002 magazine interview, that appeared to endorse sexual relationships between adults and youths, resurfaced, along with his representations seeking clemency for his former partner who was facing trial in Israel for the statutory rape of a Palestinian youth.
He withdrew at the start of August. A month later, prompted by some polling and fawning media coverage, he re-entered the race. It was not a wise decision. As Norris bewailed a media conspiracy against him, the questions continued. In the final days of the campaign, the tape of the 2002 interview was played on – where else? – Liveline. The country listened agog at Norris declaring that there was “something to be said” for “classic paedophilia as practised by the Greeks, where it is an older man introducing a younger man or boy to adult life”.
Norris – who said publicly that he abhorred sexual contact with children, and opposed paedophilia and incest in all its forms – would later sue RTÉ for comments made on the programme and the station settled. But the damage was done; the words were his own. He got 6 per cent on election day.
The Gallagher flame-out
Sinn Féin’s candidate Martin McGuinness and Fine Gael’s Gay Mitchell were floundering – in McGuinness’s case because of persistent questions about his IRA past, to which he offered a series of increasingly incredible answers – so the momentum as Norris imploded began to move towards the independent candidate Seán Gallagher.
Gallagher, who described himself as an entrepreneur and community activist, had previously been involved in Fianna Fáil but was now running as an Independent – allowing himself just enough distance from his old party not to be contaminated by it, but remaining close enough to be attractive to Fianna Fáil voters, who had no other candidate.
It may have been delicately pitched or it may have been accidental, but either way, combined with Gallagher’s folksy optimism at a time when the country was in the depths of economic despair, it was working. Days before polling, two polls put him on 40 per cent. After coming from nowhere, Gallagher was on the brink of the presidency.
[ How Seán Gallagher nearly became president of Ireland in 2011Opens in new window ]
There was one final twist. On a debate on the Monday night before polling day, hosted by Pat Kenny’s Frontline programme on RTÉ, McGuinness began to raise questions about Gallagher’s past fundraising for Fianna Fáil; the front-runner was hesitant and vague; “If he gave me an envelope ... If he gave me the cheque, it was made out to Fianna Fáil headquarters ... .” This did not look good at all.
Then Kenny announced that the McGuinness campaign had tweeted that the man who gave Gallagher a €5,000 cheque would appear at a Sinn Féin press conference the following day. It was a bombshell. It was also untrue. It was from a fake Twitter account; there was no press conference. But Gallagher was on the floor now, and bleeding. All the next day, he tried to clarify. But things got worse – the RTÉ programme had tied him to Fianna Fáil and he couldn’t get away.
[ Gallagher tweet was fake news before term was inventedOpens in new window ]
[ RTÉ apologises and pays ‘substantial’ damages to Sean Gallagher over tweetOpens in new window ]
A subsequent review found that the programme was unfair, and Gallagher would take significant damages from RTÉ. The review also found the programme had given Michael D Higgins a softer ride than other candidates. Support lurched spectacularly in the final three days and Higgins won handsomely.
We can never know for sure, but it seems indisputable that the Frontline programme was decisive: before it, Gallagher was on course to win the presidency; after it, he was goosed. Sometimes in politics, everything changes in an instant.
