Coming to the aid of the party

While US citizens in Ireland are being canvassed for their vote in the US presidential elections, committed campaigners are crossing the Atlantic to offer a hand. Fionola Meredith reports

What makes an American-born writer, editor and former US Peace Corps volunteer leave his home and family in Ireland for seven weeks to campaign in the US presidential election?

"I've been on a dozen protest marches since 9/11, but I also think you have to work actively for peace and change," explains Anthony Glavin, who's one of a number of individuals heading across the Atlantic off their own bat to help the John Kerry presidential election campaign in Florida. "I just feel so strongly about what another four years of Bush/Cheney might mean for the US and the rest of the world," he adds.

Individual Republican supporters are also reportedly heading west to support their candidate. And while they're all campaigning over there, Irish-based Democrats and Republicans are busy rallying the overseas constituency - reckoned to amount to close to 50,000 people in towns and cities across Ireland. Campaigners are doing their best to make every vote count, mindful of the narrow margin with which the election was won the last time round.

Campaigning for Kerry in the US is a big commitment for Glavin. While the Kerry campaign will provide housing for him, Glavin's trip will be self-financed. He has no idea where he'll be staying, or what he'll be asked to do once he arrives.

Born in Massachusetts, Glavin is a life-long Democrat, and has volunteered over the years on behalf of various Democratic hopefuls, including Charlie Pierce, an Afro-American candidate for the Cambridge, Massachusetts, School Committee - which was Tip O'Neill's first elected office - and Father Robert Drinan, an anti-Vietnam-War Jesuit, who was successfully elected to Congress in 1970, where he served on the judiciary committee whose investigations into the Watergate scandal helped to oust Richard Nixon. But he has lived in Dublin with his partner Adrienne and daughters Caitrin and Aoife for many years now.

What is it about this particular election that has led him to play an active role in campaigning for the Democratic candidate?

"This is the most critical election we've ever seen, and I feel I just can't watch from afar this time. I've been tearing my hair out since Bush was elected, agonising from a distance about the rollback of civil liberties, living in dread of the Supreme Court nominations. So now I'm actually going to take part in the campaign, it's sweet relief simply to be doing something.

"In particular, US foreign policy is a major issue for me, especially as regards the Middle East. Not just the debacle in Iraq, but the Israel/Palestinian conflict, which lies at the heart of so much of the anger towards the US. I don't believe we can just 'wage war on terror'; we have to address the inequities and injustices that feed terrorism too."

Other vital concerns for Glavin include, "the massive budget and trade deficits which currently prevent the funding of anything but military misadventures, leaving education, the cities, and health care totally under-funded. And the threat to civil liberties at home, vis-à-vis much of the Patriot Act, and the unabashed assault on the environment by this administration."

But what about John Kerry himself? Glavin is unequivocal in his support for Kerry, who was his senator when Glavin lived in Massachusetts.

"I have no problem voting for Kerry. The Democrats need someone with credibility on national security, and he represents our best chance of ousting Bush and his imperialist, oil-driven agenda."

With the election less than two months away, Irish-based Democratic volunteers are trying to ensure US citizens living in Ireland cast their vote in time. Most US citizens abroad are entitled to vote by absentee ballot (and this includes those who may never have lived in the US), but it is essential they get their ballot applications back to the US no later than 30 days before the election, so they need to post them in the next two weeks.

This weekend, Democrats Abroad Ireland - the Irish wing of the official Democratic Party organisation for the five million US citizens who live outside the United States - is sponsoring voter registration events across Ireland in counties Clare, Cork, Donegal, Dublin, Galway and Kilkenny. The US citizens who have signed up so far include people who have retired to Ireland, employees of American multinationals and the children of Irish-American parents.

Rebecca Woolf, chairwoman of Democrats Abroad Ireland, says these votes could have a dramatic effect on the outcome of the election.

"Since 2000, when many people felt that the election did not accurately represent the wishes of the American people, organisations like Democrats Abroad have worked very hard to ensure that every US citizen living outside the US is able to exercise their right to vote.

"We estimate that there are 50,000 people in Ireland with US citizenship, most of whom are entitled to vote. When you consider that the most powerful person in the world managed to squeak in on the matter of 537 votes . . . it's entirely likely that Ireland could tip the balance in this election."

The Republican Party is often perceived to benefit more than the Democrats from the votes of US citizens living abroad because a large number of them are in the armed forces. But Rebecca Woolf says many soldiers have represented themselves as Republicans in name only in order to advance their military career. "When you look at who makes up the US military, it's poor people, it's black people, it's Hispanic people - and those are Democratic voters. We reckon that at least two-thirds of the overseas vote is Democratic."

The Republican party has its own branch to recruit potential volunteers and voters in Ireland. James Young, chairman of the Irish wing of Republicans Abroad, says he knows of three or four Republican volunteers from Ireland planning to hit the Bush campaign trail in October. But, like Democrats Abroad, they have no official tally of the number of volunteers travelling to the United States to support their preferred candidate. "Often in the past, we've only found out that people have been when they get back with a load of buttons and bumper stickers," he says.

The effort to bring out the US overseas vote for Kerry is a worldwide one. Kerry's sister, Diana, chairwoman of the Americans Overseas for Kerry organisation, recently visited London to encourage the 260,000 US voters resident in Britain to cast their vote for Kerry. Like Woolf, she emphasises the importance of the overseas vote, telling Americans living abroad they could well hold the key to her brother becoming president.

"We learned in the last election that every vote counts. There are several states where the vote will be very close and overseas votes could make a difference. We are aggressively searching for every vote," she says.

Although the "last chance" voter registration drive sponsored by Democrats Abroad Ireland is non-partisan, it's obvious where the loyalties of these Irish-American volunteers lie.

Jessie Lendennie, a Democrat originally from Arkansas, who now lives in Co Clare and runs the publishing house Salmon Poetry, can scarcely contain her fury and frustration with the Bush administration. "Oh my God, I will never go back home again if Kerry doesn't win!" she says. "I left the States in 1970 when Nixon was in his heyday, with $300 and a two-year-old child. I didn't want my son to grow up with the same gung-ho indoctrination about how fantastic America is that I had. But now, with Bush, the horror is all coming back. Reagan and Nixon look like twinkie guys compared to him. I can barely even look at the man.

"Bush is trading on his own pig-ignorance and bigotry as though it's a strength; total and utter failures are being presented as accomplishments. Bush is mesmerised with this jingoistic idea that, as Americans, 'we're the greatest in the world'. Butthis just taps into people's existing fear and ignorance. And it results in a hatred of anyone who isn't like you."

The campaign clearly has a long way to run - on both sides of the Atlantic.