Campaign Watch »

• FF no more? What does it Mather?

  June 5, 2009 @ 10:18 am | by Kilian Doyle

  Michael O’Regan, Parliamentary Correspondent, writes: Stephen Mather had his moment of national fame when he was one of a number of Fianna Fáil activists to stand next to RTÉ political correspondent David Davin-Power on the Nine O’Clock News on a Saturday night last February.

  The occasion was the Fianna Fáil ardfheis and Davin-Power was doing a live interview with newsreader Anne Doyle following Brian Cowen’s speech.

  The Fianna Fáil activists surrounding the RTÉ man attracted considerable comment in Leinster House and elsewhere at the time.

  Mather later became disillusioned with the party’s structures when he failed to get a nomination to contest the Edenderry electoral area in the Offaly county council elections. He resigned from the party and is now running as an Independent.

  Mather, a retail manager, was Fianna Fáil’s Offaly county secretary and was one of the five-man election strategy committee which oversaw the party’s general election campaign in the county, which is part of the Taoiseach’s Laois-Offaly constituency.

  “I was very unhappy with the interview process used to select candidates,’’ he said. “But I remain fully supportive of the Taoiseach and still regard myself as a Fianna Fáil man at heart.’’

  The Davin-Power chorus line was made up of Mather and other Fianna Fáil activists from north Offaly. While it became a Youtube hit at the time, Mather says he did not get much reaction himself. “A few friends recognised me,’’ he said.

  

• Something for (nearly) everyone

  June 3, 2009 @ 3:00 pm | by Kilian Doyle

  Enda Kenny spent much of today’s Fine Gael press conference fending off accusations of flip-flopping over Sinn Féin. Beforehand, he got the chance, uninterrupted, to make his final Big Speech, surrounded by Byelection Big Cheeses.  Statesmanlike? You decide.

  

  Meanwhile, the Labour Party has just posted profiles online of some of their first-time male candidates, after chivalrously, letting the women go first.

  On the Fianna Fáil website, European election candidate Lord Mayor Eibhlin Byrne – or some flunky purporting to be her – has a new blog post up. She wants to take her “passion for Dublin and its people to Europe”. And leave her lovely pooch behind? Heartless isn’t the word.

  The Green Party had a full page ad in today’s Irish Times – which you can also see here - featuring gushing endorsements from such luminaries as Eddie Hobbs and Darina Allen.

  Pah. That’s the best they can do? Lowly Independent Mannix Flynn has Hollywood star Gabriel Byrne and music legend Christy Moore on his side. Beat that.

  

  Believe it or not, Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams is quite the wag on Twitter. His tweets are usually mildly entertaining and a far cry from the usual “I’m at a shopping centre today shaking hands” guff that most candidates post.

  An example: “The sunshine continues. So does the election. Christy Burke has his arm in a sling. Hurt it opening a gate. Anything for a vote.”

  Or what about: “’Down along Thomas Street and by God in a jiffy I had my arms around her beyond in the park’. I sang as we drove along Thomas Street.” Wouldn’t you love to bug that car?

  Follow him here.

  Elsewhere on Twitter, an anonymous poster purporting to be “presiding officer somewhere in the North West” promises they will be posting about their experiences of polling day here. Expect plenty of tweets about “steady flows of voters” and people’s excuses for leaving their polling cards at home throughout the day.

• Green shoots, Green scores

  June 2, 2009 @ 11:17 am | by Kilian Doyle

  Are we mishearing him, or is Green Party candidate for the ward of Pembroke-Rathmines Dave Robbins telling us his daughter was born in a park?

  We know the Greens like to be earthy, but that’s a bit of a step too far, wouldn’t you agree?

  Seriously though, he seems a decent chap, and, married as we are to an urban farmer, we echo his enthusiastic approach to growing one’s own food, even if he does lay on the self-satisfied Dublin 4-6 “I only feed Siofra and Fiachra organic food from Donnybrook Fair” schtick a bit thick. And he reminds us of Declan Ganley.

  

  campaignwatch@irishtimes.com

• Most unfortunate slogan of the campaign?

  @ 9:06 am | by Kilian Doyle

  Independent Limerick County Council candidate Richie Smith (48) urges the electorate to “cut the bull” in this recent newspaper ad.

  As Limerick Blogger points out, this is a “poor choice of words” considering his conviction earlier this year for cruelty to animals “of the most appalling kind”.

  

  Meanwhile, someone’s been having fun with the world’s cheapest computer graphics programme and a Commodore 64. The results are, predictably, awful.

  

• It’s all Boyleing over

  June 1, 2009 @ 10:06 am | by Kilian Doyle

  As you are no doubt aware, Senator Dan Boyle, the Green party’s candidate in the European election South constituency, is a second cousin of singing sensation Susan Boyle.

  He was very impressed with her performance on hit TV show Britain’s Got Talent at the weekend.

  “She did very well and acquitted herself well,” he said of the relative he has never met. “If I get a fraction of the votes she got, I’ll be very happy.”

  

  Anyway, it’s well-known among political circles the Senator is no mean crooner himself.  Go here to hear Dan singing self-penned ditty The New Generation for the European Greens Green Vision song contest.

  Reports that Simon Cowell’s minions have been parked outside the Senator’s house for weeks, contract at the ready, have yet to be confirmed.

• An example to the big boys (and girls)

  May 30, 2009 @ 11:52 am | by Kilian Doyle

  It’s probably a bit late for candidates to start thinking about campaign videos, but we were really struck by one we found on Irish Election from Lech Szczecinski, an Independent running for Dublin City council in the South-West Inner City ward.

  Using a simple yet engaging concept,  it is an example to all campaigners on limited budgets.  And those swimming in cash too. Lech admits he cannot doorstep 16,000 voters, so this is shot from the doorsteppees point of view.

  He comes across as personable, intelligent, likeable and trustworthy. We don’t know anything about his former life in Poland, but he reminds us of a geography teacher we had in school who managed to make karst, moraines and oxbow lakes sound like the most fascinating things on earth.

  The iffy Eurotrance soundtrack spoils it a bit, and Lech gets a tad carried away with  the cheesy graphics at the end, but you can’t have everything.

  

  Lech makes the point that some 10 per cent of Ireland’s residents are non-nationals. As Ruadhán Mac Cormaic writes in The Irish Times today, immigrants are beginning to make their political mark on the Irish landscape. He notes that this year, more than 40 foreign candidates from some 13 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia and the US are standing, 30 of whom were selected by the main parties (only Sinn Féin has none).

  So, do you think immigrant voters could upset long-standing voting patterns? And have the main political parties done enough to address their concerns and tap into this demographic?

• Arra, suren ev’ryting’s grand

  May 29, 2009 @ 6:06 pm | by Kilian Doyle

  There is a huge amount of smiling in this video. Has nobody told them this country’s going to hell in handcart? And do they not read polls?

  

• Online campaigning: visionary or window-dressing? Discuss

  May 28, 2009 @ 10:16 am | by Kilian Doyle

  Labour candidate in the Tallaght ward for the South Dublin County Council election Dermot Looney has issued a brave boast. He claims that his online campaign is the “biggest and best” out of several thousand local election candidates in Ireland.

  Them’s fighting words, fella. Methinks the Greens, who seem to be on a mission to take over the whole Internet, may have a thing or two to say about that.

  To give Looney credit, he has been running his blog for years, with – he says – great success.  Not only that, but he has deftly cut the slaggers off at the pass by calling it the The Looney Left, which is a gesture of self-deprecation rarely seen among politicians.

  As anyone with even a passing interest in elections is aware, Irish political parties have embraced the Internet this year in a way never before seen, undoubtedly inspired by the success of the Obama campaign’s online mobilisation prior to last year’s US presidential elections, which changed politics forever.

  From MEPs with big budgets to lowly aspirant town council members, Irish candidates, like Obama’s team, are using every tool at their disposal, from websites to blogs to Facebook to Youtube to Twitter, in a bid to reach as many potential voters as possible. And, lest we forget, fundraise. 

  However, Ireland and the US are very different animals. The sheer scale of the US, which has a population nearly 75 times the size of ours and 140 times the land mass, means it is simply unfeasible for a US presidential candidate to knock on every door or even speak in every city. The internet was therefore quite simply the only possible way to reach everyone.

  While the same could be said for the large European election constituencies, most Irish politicians do not have the excuse of being unable to cover all the ground, particularly in the local elections, where candidates are vying to represent relatively small electorates. It could be argued that no matter how visible their online presence, there is still no substitute for politicians wearing out shoe leather and pressing the flesh.

  Or is there? What do you think? Is Politics 2.0  worthwhile, a waste of time or a bit of both?

• Video niceties

  May 27, 2009 @ 9:23 am | by Kilian Doyle

  The Green Party have finally released their European election video, which we left out of our previous post on such broadcasts because it wasn’t ready.

  It features clips of well-schooled and well-intentioned punters – including some dude single-handedly holding up a windmill – explaining why the Greens are good for jobs, overlaid with the sound of a folksy acoustic guitar being strummed gently. So far, so good.

  But then it goes all schmaltzy and becomes another tearjerker, heavy on the “doing it for the kids” message. The insinuation is that if you don’t vote Green, your children and grandchildren will grow up foraging in feral packs in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. So there.

  

  Meanwhile, the campaign of Fianna Fáil’s Dublin candidate Lord Mayor Eibhlin Byrne has gone to the dogs.  Wonder how long it will take for Sam’s face to replace his owner’s on her posters?

  

  campaignwatch@irishtimes.com

• Alex in the basement mixing up the medicine

  May 26, 2009 @ 7:34 pm | by Kilian Doyle

  Finally, an election video that actually raised our interest, rather than our eyebrows.

  From Labour’s Dublin South byelection candidate Senator Alex White, it’s a rip-off of homage to Dylan’s ground-breaking Subterranean Homesick Blues promo film.

  Sadly, Alex missed a trick. He should have stood there dressed in a waistcoat and intoned “I’m on the pavement, thinking ’bout the Government” in his best Dylan voice, which might have been a giggle.  Roping Ruairi Quinn in to do the Allen Ginsberg cameo would have been a nifty move too.

  

  PS We’re reliably informed this video required 15 takes because George Lee kept whizzing around in the background on his Segway trying to get into the shot.

  Here’s Dylan’s original. Partly for comparison purposes but mostly because it’s great.

  

Next Page »