ANALYSIS: Different strokes . . .Tom McEllistrim does a solo run while FF compatriot Dan Kiely canvasses with full party backing. Kathy Sheridan ask them why
I'm saying nothing. But off the record, mind, Tom's like the Scarlet bloody Pimpernel. I'm a Fianna Fáil man on the road a long time now and I never saw the like of it.
He won't answer the shaggin' phone, even to HQ. Changed his mobile number several times. Ignored Síle de Valera and Frank Fahey completely when they were in Kerry. Too busy, if you don't mind. His own most ardent supporters can't get him.
He never sets foot in the constituency office in Tralee and won't go to meetings, even the comhairle ceanntar ones. Three of them this week and he wasn't at one. Has his mother running his campaign and - you won't credit this - goes around canvassing on his own. It's like he wants to pretend that everyone's out to get him.
Now it's a kind of a heresy to say this, but that kind of aul' messing could lose us the seat altogether. We're out of our heads with him. He claims he's asking for the number twos for Dan Kiely - as he shaggin' should be - yet they haven't a civil word to say to each other. But you'll never hear him criticise Martin Ferris.
I met a man last week coming in from the canvass in Ardfert and in 40 years, he said, he never seen the like of it. Every second house was Ferris/McEllistrim,Ferris/ McEllistrim. Some are wondering, like, about a pact.
And this is the fella who can't open his mouth without mentioning his father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather and their 75 years of service for Fianna Fáil and Kerry. We know he's sitting on 4,000 votes on the strength of that. And with Kiely's - eh - chequered career, there's a few Fianna Fáilers won't wear Dan, so they've no choice other than Tom. And Tom thinks he owns the bloody seat because he's a McEllistrim.
And there it is, the rough guide to what keeps "official" Fianna Fáilers in Kerry North muttering out of the sides of their mouths.
The Irish Times puts a call-out for Tom and, in the meantime, hooks up with big Dan in Causeway. He arrives in the middle of a downpour, with a white, taxi-style Dan Kiely No 1 sign stuck on top of the car. McEllistrim's polar opposite, Dan likes a crowd around him. So voters open the door to find a big, wet, motley gang gaping at them like cows over a gate.
The gallop from house to house makes for a fairly perfunctory canvassing style. "It's awful important for us this time."
No mention of number twos for McEllistrim, but the reception is warm. "I'm looking for a three-bedroom house," demands a young woman, as if he stocked them in the boot. "I'll look after that for you. Didn't I look after you before?" says Dan.
He has 12 teams out, all led by a member of the vast Kiely tribe. There's an organisational cock-up in Kilmoylan. Dan is cross - "ready to blow" even, as a team member says warily - and works the mobile. "I'm here in the middle of a canvass and I'm standing here doing nothing when I should be knocking on doors. So talk to me," he barks.
He did blow last week by all accounts, when the Kerryman published a poll that showed him at a miserable 8.4 per cent (down from 14.6 in a Prime Time poll), compared to 13.3 for McEllistrim (also down from 14.6). Worse, between himself and McEllistrim, FF was mustering only 21.7 per cent, compared to 30 for Ferris. Kiely dismisses it. "If the Fianna Fáil vote is brought out, there's no way we can lose the seat. Why should North Kerry be only 21 per cent when nationally it's nearly 50? We got 47 per cent in the local elections less than three years ago."
One shrewd old FF hand is predicting that Kiely will take 18 per cent and the second seat in this three-seater, with McEllistrim taking 13 per cent. Everyone else just looks nervous.
As for Tom, he confounds all predictions by answering his mobile first time. He refuses to have journalists on his canvass but agrees to talk later. The first arrangement falls through after a misunderstanding but a chat with his nice mother (the 33-year-old Maynooth graduate is single and lives in the family home) produces a result. We meet in a hotel.
So, Thomas (his preferred name), are you, in fact, the Scarlet Pimpernel? Startlingly mild-mannered, he doesn't even change expression. "I'm only doing what the strategists came down and told us to do last October. 'Go out and knock on as many doors as you can . . .' I'm doing exactly what they told me to do."
But you've been ignoring their calls, running an independent campaign? "Fianna Fáil has not been contacting me that much since October." Ah, Thomas, come on . . . "Well, once or twice they rang me, but I'd probably tell them not to be bothering me, I'm busy campaigning . . . Anyway, every single one of the public representatives, organisation chairmen and secretaries and higher ones up the organisation are with Kiely. My support is from ordinary members."
Did you snub Síle de Valera? "I didn't meet her. I'm not sure, was she in Kerry?" he asks sweetly.
And Frank Fahey? "I didn't get the details of what he was doing for the day. . . So I went away canvassing for the day. I'm not sorry."
And, look, he likes canvassing on his own. "Dealing with people one to one, like my father before me." He never changed his mobile number; he borrowed his sister's phone for a while when his went on the blink and "that was way before the election was called". And he denies any pact with Martin Ferris (SF) or that he's "soft" on him. "It's not my policy to attack other candidates . . . But, of course, I'm looking for number twos and I'll take them from anyone. I've actually canvassed Dick Spring's house, and Martin Ferris's and Jimmy Deenihan's." Dan Kiely's? "He was out. The gate was locked."
He won't analyse why the bandwagon pulled in behind Kiely and not him. "I've my own style of canvassing," is all he'll say, but some wounds run deep. When Prime Time ran a segment on Kerry North, Fianna Fáil ignored Thomas's convenient presence in a Dublin hotel (where he'd been summoned with other candidates for pre-election discussions) and sent up Dan Kiely instead. By plane.
"I don't know why they did that when Prime Time asked for all the candidates. It was unfair."
But Thomas is a contradictory fellow. He complains he gets no media coverage but, under pressure, concedes he gets plenty of opportunities. It's the kind of opportunities that are the problem. "All they want to know about is whether there's a rift between me and Marie Gorman and if I talk to Dan Kiely, and what I think of Denis Foley backing Kiely . . . I just don't want to be drawn into controversy."
He wants to talk about the real issues, he says, such as roads and health and youth funding and motor insurance.
But there's a problem there too. His claims that his motions at the county council are given no local coverage were met by the Kerryman with the response: "His contributions are minimal and his attendance, at best, is average."
Still, he might yet have the last laugh. The view is that those dogged, lonely, 12-hour canvassing days are paying off. Watch Kerry North.