Peggy O'Hara spends most of her time in her home on the west bank of the Foyle where she is recovering from ill health.
Yet the image of the 76-year-old republican appears on election posters in Derry often alongside an image of her INLA hunger-striker son who died in the Maze in 1981.
According to campaign manager Martin McMonagle, an alliance of ex-Sinn Féiners angry at the move on policing, Irish Republican Socialist Party members, Republican Sinn Féiners and the 32-County Sovereignty Committee members and others are uniting under her candidacy.
Their common denominator is not opposition to Gerry Adams, The Irish Times is told insistently, it is opposition to British rule in Ireland. To that end he claims a new generation, too young to recall the Maze hunger strikes, are energised by the campaign and Patsy O'Hara's "sense of sacrifice" and are canvassing for Peggy who "will win thousands of votes".
There is no suggestion of a return to armed conflict, but then there is no suggestion either that this is a one-off campaign.
"We haven't gone away, you know," McMonagle says, borrowing a line from Gerry Adams.
Others from a variety of backgrounds, however, are utterly dismissive.
Willie Hay, the personable DUP candidate, could well top the poll in this overwhelmingly nationalist city, courtesy of further shrinkage in the Ulster Unionist vote.
There is a sense here that Peter Munce could be rewarded for fighting in such barren UUP territory as this with a choicer cut of electoral territory at some stage in the future.
Hay waves away the threat from anyone outside the main parties - which means basically his own, Sinn Féin and the SDLP.
He pooh-poohs the campaign by Willie Frazer who is standing in Foyle on an anti-St Andrews Agreement ticket, and claims the south Armagh man has acted to "shred the unionist vote".
The DUP has reason to feel secure there will be no change in this election on the unionist side of the divide.
Speaking sotto voce, Hay doesn't think there will be a change in the 3-2 share-out of seats between the SDLP and Sinn Féin either.
This is Durkan country and there can be no doubt that the party is looking to next Wednesday with rather more hope than dread, unlike the last Assembly election in 2003.
The party leader has been joined by personal friend and political ally Brian Cowen for a business breakfast, ostensibly for the Minister for Finance to promote the National Development Programme.
The Minister lauds his hosts as "the right people to make sensible economic decisions" when in office. "The Government stands ready to work with you." The Celtic Tiger boom would not have been as sustained or thorough without peace in the North, he claims, and John Hume nods silently in accord.
This is valuable stuff for a party leader who spends most of his time fighting for seats elsewhere.