"What you want is a one-way ticket to the white house," said the ticket collector at Bray DART station as Ms Mary Banotti and former minister Mr Richard Bruton passed through the gates.
The presidential candidate's train journey yesterday from Clontarf to Bray was not some pre-planned stunt for her to announce she was steaming ahead on the as Aras Express.
It was just the fastest way for her to get from a fund-raising coffee morning in north Co Dublin to an interview at East Coast Radio in Co Wicklow on a tight time schedule.
Of course, it also presented Ms Banotti with a captive audience to canvass, and she rapidly worked the carriage with the diligence of a seasoned ticket inspector. Clutching at the seats to keep her balance as the train shuddered along, she shook hand after hand.
The DART-users reacted in a variety of ways. Some adopted the evasive pose of travellers who haven't paid their fares, immersing their heads in newspapers and shielding their ears with personal stereo earphones.
Most, however, seemed to welcome the diversion as onboard entertainment at no extra cost. It's not every day you get to share a DART carriage with a former government minister and a presidential hopeful. And it beats reading the advertisements one more time.
Ms Banotti has mocked the "touchy-feely" language of the other presidential hopefuls. But her urge to, if not embrace, then at least reach out to the electorate, was evident in her body language.
As she sat alongside people chatting about this and that, she would casually fling her arm around the backs of their seats. If seated opposite them, her arm would be stretched out towards them along the base of the window.
"Have you decided how you're voting yet?" she gently inquired of one middle-aged woman with a large shopping bag.
"Yeah, more or less," replied the woman, nodding repeatedly.
"Yeah, yeah," said Ms Banotti, nodding back.
There was silence while the two women eye-balled each other for a few seconds. Then Ms Banotti came straight out and asked: "Is it for me?"
"More or less," came the diplomatic reply, along with more mutual nodding.
The last person on the carriage was a young man with earphones. He kept his head down, presumably hoping he would be the one who always gets away. But over she went to introduce herself.
"Can you hear me with the earphones?" she said, gently embarrassing him into removing them. "I'd be grateful for your support."
Earlier, Ms Banotti had burst through the door of the lounge in Dollymount House, Clontarf, where some 300 coffee-drinkers had gathered for a fund-raising event.
Dressed in a rich purple suit, she waved exuberantly to supporters, some of whom remembered her as a child growing up in the area.
One of her former teachers presented Ms Banotti with a photograph of herself and some school friends making their holy communion. Earnestly holding up her little missal and rosary beads, Ms Banotti was by far the tallest girl in the black and white photograph.
The teacher, Ms Maura Walsh, described Ms Banotti as a "very nice and serious, very trustworthy child. She enjoyed herself of course. I liked her because she was such a loveable girl."
The welcome for Ms Banotti in her familial bailiwick was a cosy one. After her brief speech, Mr Bruton said there was a saying that prophets were never recognised in their own countries, "but the people of Clontarf and north Dublin have shown that that isn't the case".