THE NEWS all the way to Co Wicklow features analysis of two opinion polls suggesting she’s making no headway in her campaign. A national radio station follows up with a long piece about doctored photographs, focusing heavily on her posters.
These are the days when it must be hard to climb out of bed. But Mary Davis is soldiering on. And if yesterday’s schedule looked frenetic but a tad unchallenging, well maybe that was understandable. A visit to a school; a short walkabout; a drop-in to a sports club full of wildly enthusiastic Special Olympics athletes; a meeting with Wicklow Tourism folk; another with the chamber of commerce, a tree-planting ceremony and a visit to the site of a youth centre. But if the schedule looked a tad risk-free, the timetable always had the feel of fantasy about it.
Her liveried bus and a handful of supporters were already at Kilcoole’s post-primary school when she stepped elegantly out of an 06 D BMW into a gale force wind, in a slim coat, pearls and brave, five-inch heels. The schedule allowed for no more than 20 minutes of chat but it was about three times longer before she finally emerged from the school, shaken, with her daughter’s supportive arm around her. And no, Kilcoole’s charmingly attentive students hadn’t laid a finger on her. They showed plenty of intelligent curiosity and she held their attention by talking unstuffily about her vision for office in difficult times, mentioning her own four children, “who are just like you, growing up, trying to get jobs”. One is unemployed, she said, and two are starting their own company.
What upset the general congeniality was a separate RTÉ interview – conducted bizarrely, under a massive, papier-mache representation of Puff the Magic Dragon, in the school hall – questioning her qualifications as a PE teacher, for membership of the board of a Bank of Ireland subsidiary, ICS, and decisions taken during the boom. She brought “lifetime experience”, she answered; she had been running a multimillion-euro organisation. Her frustration was palpable.
An observer wondered whether a male ex-teacher who had gone on to run a similarly vast organisation would have his credentials questioned in such a way. Maybe not, but her main offence, it seems, was her refusal to take any personal responsibility for certain policy decisions, such as 100 per cent mortgages.
She managed to keep a lid on her frustration during the eight-minute interview and vehemently denied later that she was in tears afterwards. “I wasn’t . . . I don’t cry easily, no way. I don’t give in easily and I don’t cry easily. I was just frustrated at the attitude, at the level of questioning about one, tiny, minute part of my life. And when I tried to explain that I ran a multimillion-euro organisation, that I started with nothing and built up that staff and 30,000 volunteers to create one of the most successful events ever held in Ireland . . . Well, I don’t know where there is this intense interrogation . . .”
Maybe because it was the banks that have brought us all to this sorry pass? And she explains – again – that it wasn’t just any old bank, but the bank that had sponsored the Special Olympics, that had involved all its local branches and seconded 1,000 members of staff. “The invitation to join the board didn’t come out of nowhere. They had seen up close how I undertook my role, and it was obviously very impressive.”
She explains – again – the “commercial sensitivity” around decisions taken at board level, implying perhaps that she would like to say more but is prohibited. Nonetheless, her reluctance to concede that some board decisions were at least seriously misguided hangs in the air. As do the large sums of money she has been earning from Special Olympics – which some took to be a voluntary position. “It’s a misunderstanding . . . I worked as a volunteer with Special Olympics for 10 years and then I worked my way up to the top of the organisation . . .” In fact, she says, Tim Shriver offered her the role of chief marketing and development officer before she decided to stand for the presidency. The money doesn’t come from Ireland, she says. “That’s a misconception . . . My pay for the work I do in Europe/Eurasia comes from Washington.”
After that, it’s off to Greystones for a walkabout, into the teeth of a rainstorm. She takes off on those soaring heels, smiling brightly for the women in the St Vincent de Paul shop who offer soothing words of praise, admiration and compliments on her appearance. A customer shrugs when Davis asks whether she’s interested in the presidency. “No, not really.” Davis uses the opportunity to buy a birthday card for her husband, with what appears to be a bear lying in bed on the front and the legend “Avoid that morning after feeling”. If only.
Mildred Fox, the former TD, and her brother Chris, a councillor, are Davis’s local guides but the walkabout is sadly lacking in humans, probably due to the lashing rain. A child, a woman with a dog, a Polish check-out assistant without a vote, a woman and her sister who’s home from Vancouver.
Next stop is at Bray Lakers’s temporary premises, a special sports club full of chatty, happy men and women, girls and boys with intellectual disabilities, and mothers and fathers. Davis visibly relaxes, high-fiveing, chatting easily, talking knowledgably with the people who run the club.
Even if the canvassing schedule is beyond rescue, this is where Davis is most at home. As we leave, Mandy Finlay – the breakout star of a dance routine performed for the visitors – walks alongside Davis and announces that she’s coming home for dinner. “Not to my house you’re not,” laughs Davis, “you won’t find much food going there at the moment”. Just one of those days.
