On the campaign trail: Animals were playing a central role in the campaigns of Peter Cassells and Mary White this week. Frank McNally report
Although his brother, Joe, captained Meath to an All-Ireland title - a point mentioned prominently in the election literature - Peter Cassells doesn't look like the outdoor type himself.
A veteran trade unionist of the negotiation-in-smoke-filled-rooms school, even his posters seem a bit pale. At a sun-drenched Kilbeggan Races on Monday evening, you sensed a man who is still adjusting to the harsh daylight, and the concept of canvassing in the open air.
"Give me one of those," he says, as Westmeath councillor Johnny Penrose produces a pack of cigarettes, and the pair attempt to recreate the atmosphere of late-night talks on a national pay agreement.
By the standards of other campaigns, their canvassing operation at Kilbeggan is laid-back and laconic: the two men study the race-card and pick potential winners on the track, while - casually - Penrose surveys the racegoers and picks known or potential Labour voters to introduce. Then the quiet-spoken, genial Cassells says his few words, hands over his card and returns to studying the form.
But you don't get to be general secretary of the ICTU without knowing how to conduct yourself at meetings, of the horse-racing or union kind. Tonight's races are part-sponsored by Fine Gael, so Enda Kenny, Avril Doyle, Mairead McGuinness and every FG councillor within a 50-mile radius have descended on the track.
For the Labour contingent this is a polite guerrilla operation, aimed at picking off a few voters without upsetting either Fine Gael or the horses. And the wisdom of the approach is underlined when a Fianna Fáil/horse enthusiast complains to Cassells about the Blueshirt hijack of the winners' enclosure. "I don't mind you, standing out here with your badge," he says.
Sport's vote-winning potential is not lost on the Labour man either. His leaflets for Kilbeggan are standard issue in 10 counties of his East campaign, featuring as they do a picture of the candidate with Pat Rabbitte. In Meath, he laughingly admits, Rabbitte has been dropped in favour of a picture with Joe Cassells and the Sam Maguire.
And the power of the GAA is dramatically illustrated when a Kilbeggan punter seizes Cassells's hand and asks him if he remembers the time they were travelling in separate cars to play hurling for Athboy and his - the punter's - car crashed. Cassells later recalls that the event happened in 1970. But 34 years on, it's still worth a vote.
The Labour candidate has made corruption and lack of services his keynote issues. Wisely, for a man who negotiated five national partnership agreements, he doesn't promise to overthrow the establishment.
But nobody at Kilbeggan mentions policy anyway, except another FF supporter who, uncanvassed, promises him a "number three" and delivers a lecture: "Tell Pat Rabbitte to get out and explain his policies more. He's on television too much."
This is followed - for no apparent reason - by an attack on the Greens. "They lost their way when Patricia McKenna came out against the export of weanlins. Remember, Leinster is big-farmer country, and they're not going to vote for anything like that."
A million miles from Kilbeggan, to the south-east, is Bennettsbridge, Co Kilkenny, where Mary White was canvassing yesterday.
Surrounded by Spanish chestnut trees in a village where everybody seems to be a craftsman producing natural products, the Green Party councillor was in environmentalist heaven. But she took up the point from the Fianna Fáiler in Westmeath, like a woman who'd heard this before.
Yes, the Greens want to phase out live exports, but she and Patricia McKenna would approach the issue from very different angles. It was farmers who made White a councillor in 1999, and she visited many farmyards during the general election campaign when walking "3,000 miles" (as measured by a pedometer on her ankle) across Carlow and Kilkenny, and came up just short of a Dáil seat.
In summary, her policy is that live exports should be ended only when sound economic alternatives are available. "But I read the full Green policy to an IFA meeting last week, and they were delighted with it."
Her point is underlined when she visits the butcher's shop in Bennettsbridge. The vegetarian wing of the Green movement might pale at this juncture, but White assures the butcher that her party is "very supportive of local butchers and abattoirs, of rearing and killing meat locally".
And whether it's the butcher, the baker or the candlestick-maker (whose workshop is just across from the butcher's), White has a policy to suit. This is some achievement in a village where, among the issues raised on the doorstep, is the importance of legislating against female circumcision.
At the pottery shop White stresses the importance of low-rate, green electricity for small businesses using kilns. At the small post office she stresses the Greens' support for small post offices. And where she doesn't have a specific policy, she's just supportive in general.
At the Chesneau leather crafts shop, she points to the Chesneau bag on her shoulder: "Twenty years old and a bit battered, but still going strong."
When we run out of shops (which happens quickly - it's a small village), there's the occasional passer-by, like the salmon angler we meet on the street. This is a happy accident because - what do you know? - White's single biggest issue currently is the destruction of salmon stocks by mixed-stock fishing at sea using monfilament nets.
"Eamon Gilmore signed the legislation allowing that," she says, significantly, identifying the real targets of her campaign.
Although the polls suggest Labour will take the third seat in the East constituency, White thinks she can still overhaul them. Her posters are few (1,500) and far between, but she doesn't consider this a disadvantage ("Nuala Ahern won with 500").
Her energy is unmistakeable, her enthusiasm for walking undimmed ("I'd like to walk to Brussels").