Forty-eight hours before Mairead McGuinness had dropped out of the presidential race last week, a beaming Heather Humphreys was milling around the sun-drenched Ballinamore Agricultural Show in Co Leitrim.
The apparently retired politician was blissfully unaware that she was doing the groundwork for a campaign she didn’t yet know she’d be running in.
Such is the charmed fortune of Humphreys, for whom the stars have aligned to suddenly make her the clear favourite for the Fine Gael nomination for the presidential election.
Not even a week after it lost its front-runner candidate, Fine Gael now has two heavy hitters vying for the nomination.
RM Block
Within an hour of each other on Tuesday morning, Humphreys and Ireland South MEP Seán Kelly had both thrown their hats into the ring.
Choosing to announce her intention to run on Northern Sound, the local radio station in her native Cavan-Monaghan constituency, Humphreys appeared to have used her weekend well.
She presented a distilled vision for her campaign, citing her role shepherding the Government through the successful 1916 commemorations; her time as minister for business, enterprise and innovation during Brexit; and her experience as social protection minister during the pandemic.
The theme of her campaign will be community, she said, drawing on her background as a manager of a credit union and the valuable time she spent travelling around the country as communities minister. Senior Fine Gael figures tend to become quite rhapsodical when they think of how many plaques across the country have her name on them.
Humphreys also made a pointed reference to the concerning rise in racist attacks in Ireland.
Humphreys and Kelly are now trying to enter a race that they both comprehensively ruled themselves out of.
For Humphreys, she is presenting her decision not to contest as a gesture of loyalty to her friend McGuinness, who she didn’t wish to run against. And many in Fine Gael are already presenting the former minister’s eight months out of politics as a restorative break.
Minister for Culture Patrick O’Donovan waxed lyrical on national radio on Tuesday about how the green-fingered Humphreys had used her time off to grow “the finest spuds and onions and turnips and parsnips anywhere you’ll get ‘em”.
Kelly used his announcement on Tuesday to row back on his claim in July that the presidency was a “ceremonial” role, saying now that there was “huge potential in the job, it is the highest honour in Ireland”.
Kelly will draw heavily on his experience as GAA president and the deep grassroots support he enjoys in Munster in his bid for a nomination, though it will be clear to the seasoned campaigner that at this point he is the David to Humphreys’s Goliath.
The MEP will now face an uphill battle over the next two weeks to win the support of the 20 TDs and Senators that he requires for his nomination, given many Fine Gael parliamentarians have backed Humphreys. Like Humphreys, he will also require the support of 25 Fine Gael councillors and five members of the Executive Council.
The message from Team Kelly is that it will be the party’s duty to allow or maybe even facilitate a contest between the two aspirant presidential candidates.
Speaking on Morning Ireland, Kelly made the pointed remark that Fine Gael has not enjoyed a contest “for a long time now” – including when Simon Harris became the uncontested leader last year.
There are still fresh bruises in Kelly’s native Kerry about what many saw as the cack-handed way that party HQ managed the last general election, resulting in Fine Gael not winning a seat in Kerry at all.
Any perception that the Munster man has been blocked by those in Leinster House will not go down well.
More senior Fine Gael figures are already understood to be preparing to declare for Humphreys. If that happens with enough pace and traction over the next few days, the writing may be on the wall. But Kelly is fiercely competitive and bolstered by his own supporters.
The Fine Gael campaign for the nomination to run for president has started in earnest.
