BY LAST night Dick Spring and his party supporters had canvassed 90 per cent of his Kerry North constituency.
Yesterday's canvass began in Knocknagoshel and Brosna in the east of his vast constituency and then moved to Ardfert, just five miles outside Tralee.
Everybody knows the local TD and he knows them. And if he doesn't, the party workers identify them. In one house, however, it seems that a constituent might not recognise Kerry's most famous citizen. The elderly woman is sitting in front of her house when the small Labour entourage arrived.
"What have you got for me?" she asks as party worker, Gerard Hussey, hands her a leaflet. "Everything you want," replies Dick Spring. She doesn't seem to notice as she scans the party literature. Then looking up, she clutches his arm, beams and says: "Sure if I couldn't recognise you, I wouldn't recognise anybody."
She adds: "It's younger you're looking." He runs his hand over his hair and says, "I'm not doing anything too it."
Recognition, smiles and assurances of votes all round, except in one house - a student who has exams on Thursday and Friday and won't be home. At another house the Labour Party leader thinks the young woman at the door is too young to vote. "You won't be voting this time, will you?" "No, sorry. We left it too late to register."
Ardfert is friendly territory. "Yes, it is very friendly," Dick Spring acknowledges. "We always get a good vote here." It's close to his mother's home area.
A helicopter flies over and everyone wonders who it is. "It's Mary Harney overflying. There's no votes for her in North Kerry," quips her opponent. "Maybe she's looking for cows," says canvasser, Sonny Carmody.
The TD for North Kerry becomes a traffic warden, holding back the canvassers as the cars whizz through the small village. Then the party crosses and recrosses the road, canvassing each and every home before an interval in McElligott's pub, where virtually every hand is shaken. The proprietor, Maurice McElligott, offers his local TD a pint. A third of it is drunk with the comment, "I'll be back for more after Friday".
He is back sooner than that. A few houses at the back of the village are visited and Ardfert cathedral, a small church currently under renovation. The entourage moves back to the pub, where tea and sandwiches are served.
Dick Spring is teased about his "expensive investment", part ownership in a greyhound named "Max Gang", which is in training at the moment.
A neighbour of John Bruton's approaches. "I used to vote Fianna Fail, like my father and his father before him, but now I vote for John Bruton - and for you."
Dick Spring, ever mindful of his party's numbers, says: "That's great and remember Brian Fitzgerald".
