ANALYSIS:IN THE past few days, some influential strategists in Fine Gael have tried to dampen expectations that whoever the party chooses as its presidential candidate will have a stroll in the park (and indeed a stroll to the Phoenix Park) when the election takes place in October.
For the most part, this is political palaver, a defensive mechanism employed to dampen the unbridled exuberance evident in the party. For the undeniable truth is that Fine Gael wants to win the presidential election very badly, as achingly as it has wanted to win any of the elections it has fought since Enda Kenny became leader in 2002. To employ a golfing metaphor, it’s the last of the majors it has yet to win and it doesn’t want to let this one get away.
Since the formation of the Constitution it has proved to be an elusive prize for Fine Gael. In the six electoral contests that have been held since Douglas Hyde retired in 1945, five have been won by Fianna Fáil candidates. The other was won by Mary Robinson, backed by Labour and the Workers Party, with Fine Gael’s candidate Austin Currie finishing a distant third. And on the three occasions when a president was elected unopposed, the sole candidate was a Fianna Fáil president returning for a second term.
But now the party knows that it has its best opportunity to have a Fine Gael candidate elected as president. In a reflection of the vitality of the party’s standing, three strong candidates have put in intense and energetic campaigns to sway its electoral college. This extraordinary battle is a spectacular contrast to the nadir of 1990 when a reluctant Currie had to be badgered into accepting the nomination by those close to its beleaguered party leader Alan Dukes.
What’s unusual is the party leadership has not become involved in the choice of candidate. Taoiseach Enda Kenny has remained agnostic in public and there have been no discernable behind-the-scenes moves by the leadership to steer the contest in a particular direction (as Bertie Ahern did by secretly backing Mary McAleese in 1997).
The three candidates are all very different in terms of background, style and presentation.
Mairead McGuiness is a relative newcomer to Fine Gael and has been an electoral phenomenon in the European elections, though she did not perform quite so well in the general election in 2007. She has huge national recognition, is a savvy media performer (she was after all a TV presenter and journalist before her election), and with her farming background will do well in the rural heartlands.
Her other great advantage is her decision to declare early. She announced her intentions on April 21st and since then has been on the chicken dinner circuit around the country. As against that, she is not universally liked within the party and some of her Leinster House colleagues are suspicious of her ambition and argue she is not a team player. They also argue that her undoubted panache may not be matched by the gravitas and substance required of a president.
Gay Mitchell entered the race late and with a slightly obstructionist message, setting himself as a protective levee against invasive candidates like Pat Cox, and to a lesser extent, McGuinness. Mitchell’s pedigree in the party is without equal and he has been a proven vote-getter and a very effective sweeper for the party at a time of crisis (he won an EU Parliament seat in Dublin in 2004 against all the odds). Against that, Mitchell can also divide opinion and is seen by some as not having a wide enough appeal to the middle classes and to rural voters. He’s just seen as too Dub and too working class, said a rival.
Some also see Mitchell (and the Stop Cox element of his campaign) as a repository for lingering antipathy of some within the party for its leadership and party handlers. But Mitchell has pointed to his record of electoral success and suggested the negativity has come from handlers who are hostile to his candidacy.
Cox was the last of the remaining three to enter the race and he had most ground to make up. The negatives – pompous, arrogant, carpetbagger – were stacked up against him before he began his campaign hardly more than a month ago. That said, he is a formidable campaigner, very energetic, and a persuasive debater. Those backing him say that he represents the party’s best chance of winning. But he’s had a hard job convincing people that he’s a real Fine Gael candidate. Time has always been against him. He has met all the parliamentarians but has had no opportunity to meet councillors.
The party has conducted 10 opinion polls since the new year to identify who represents its strongest card. The research showed, said a source, that the next president should maintain the prestige and stature of the presidency at the level of the last two incumbents, Mary McAleese and Mary Robinson.
The second factor was that the person should be able to represent Ireland with distinction and credibility abroad. And the research was neutral on whether it should be a man or a woman, though there was approval of what women had done to improve the status of the office.
All of that suggested, said the source, that either Cox or McGuinness would represent the party’s best chance of winning the election. That, of course, has been dismissed by Mitchell as propaganda by those backing Cox and opposing him.
The electoral college at the selection convention is weighted very much towards Oireachtas members and MEPs. The 95 TDs, Senators and MEPs are allotted 70 per cent of the voting strength. The balance is divided between its 631 councillors (with 20 per cent of the vote) and 29 members of the executive council (with a voting strength of 10 per cent).
While a close contest is predicted, McGuinness seems to have got there fastest with the mostest. “We have canvassed and sampled and we just cannot see where Mitchell and Cox are getting their support from”, said a member of her camp. “We are quietly confident that we will win all three colleges.”
In reality, whoever emerges as leader after the first count will probably go on to win the election, as lower preferences are likely to split pro rata.
The emergence of some negativity in recent days hasn’t all been about the party. When you parse the reasons, two trends emerge: one to do with the party’s overall prospects; the other stemming from a desire in some quarters to steer the electorate away from a candidate who might be viewed as a partisan Fine Gael candidate.
They argue that to win, Fine Gael’s presidential candidate needs to appeal to sectors who would only vote for the party in extremis. Fine Gael is at 42 per cent in the polls right now. But the support is fickle and can quickly ebb. Perhaps only 10 to 12 per cent are core voters who will vote Fine Gael through thick and thin. Some strategists point to exit polls from the general election which showed 20 per cent made their final decision in the last 24 hours and a further 20 per cent in the last week. That shows the volatility out there, said one.
Moreover, for all its recent electoral success, Fine Gael is guaranteed nothing later on in the year. The experience of the past 20 years has shown that the presidency has been “departyised” and that the president is seen as above politics and not of any party.
Fine Gael’s high standings in the polls may have disappeared by the end of the year in the face of the adverse economic circumstances.
Despite all the negativity surrounding his campaign David Norris remains in the high 30s (and it would be a huge surprise if he failed to get a nomination). No matter whoever prevails today, he is still the frontrunner.
All that said, Fine Gael’s candidate, no matter who he or she is, will be the candidate to beat.