Constituency profile/Newry and Armagh: SF is targeting a seat held by one of the giants of Irish nationalism, writes Deaglan de Breadun.
At last the rain has stopped and, in the distance, the Mountains of Mourne never looked so beautiful. But the group of men working their way through the Cloughreagh housing estate on the edge of Newry are too busy to notice the scenery.
This is the election campaign of Sinn Féin's Conor Murphy, already a member of the Assembly, who is targeting the Westminster seat of the outgoing MP, Seamus Mallon of the SDLP. His canvassing team is highly organised and its senior members tick off names on a clipboard as they pilot their four-wheel-drives along the narrow country roads.
The candidate himself has acquired a new pinstripe suit for the election. His mates tease him about it but jeans and jumpers are banned in favour of "smart casual" wear for Murphy's election workers. There's banter at the doorsteps as well but if there are any non-Sinn Féin voters around, they keep their views to themselves. "I'm voting for Danny Kennedy," claimed one householder, but the UUP candidate shouldn't count on that one.
Little attention has been given to the Newry-Armagh constituency, compared with the high-profile battle to succeed John Hume as MP for Foyle, but the pundits say Conor Murphy has a better chance of taking a seat here than his party colleague Mitchel McLaughlin has in Derry.
To succeed in his objective, Murphy - a former republican prisoner in Long Kesh - will have to fight off the challenge from the SDLP's Dominic Bradley, a quietly spoken, hard-working schoolteacher who was elected MLA in 2003 and has managed the Mallon campaign for the past 20 years.
Mallon is one of the giants of constitutional nationalism in the last 30 years, chief SDLP negotiator in the Good Friday negotiations, subsequently deputy first minister in the power-sharing executive and the man who famously coined the phrase "Sunningdale for slow learners" as a description of the Belfast Agreement. He has considerable prestige, even with republicans, and Bradley is clearly pleased that his mentor is accompanying him on the door-to-door canvass.
Neither side is lacking campaign workers. An SDLP fundraising event in Newry's Canal Court Hotel attracted a sizeable attendance of men and women, not many of them under 40. What Murphy calls his "squad" is mostly male but so numerous that he confesses himself: "Sometimes it's hard to find enough for them to do." Timing is all. A knock on one particular door from Murphy's team gets no response, despite the presence of a "Chelsea tractor" in the driveway. Sinn Féin's Cllr Pat McGinn wonders if it's "Coronation Street time".
The new image republicans are trying to cultivate took a severe knock with the Northern Bank raid in December and, most of all, the horrific killing of Robert McCartney in Belfast at the end of January.
The SDLP's Bradley believes public revulsion against the republicans will benefit him at the polling booth. He says nationalist voters who had "lent" their votes to the republicans feel now they have been "let down". The McCartney episode had by far the greatest impact, not least what people regarded as the ducking and diving of Sinn Féin after the event. He thinks this mood-change should ensure the SDLP holds the seat.
Observers caution, however, that his profile is low by comparison with Mallon's and that Murphy came a close second in the last Westminster poll. Bradley is unsure of the scale of nationalist revulsion against the republicans and says the "biggest challenge" will be to mobilise SDLP voters on the day. Plans are being laid for this, but he won't discuss them, which seems a sensible precaution.
On the unionist side, the DUP's Paul Berry topped the poll in the 2003 Assembly elections and is expected to outperform his UUP rival, Danny Kennedy.
Running as an independent civil liberties candidate, retired Newry businessman Gerry Markey was inspired by the memory of murdered friends left "lying in ditches like dogs". His aim is to "put a spoke" in the Sinn Féin election effort, although the net effect may be to take support from the SDLP.
Despite the current anti-Sinn Féin mood, there will be general surprise if Conor Murphy fails to take this seat.