Nominations of candidates for the next President of Ireland (Uachtarán na hÉireann) closed at 12 noon, and only three gathered enough support to be named on the ballot paper. These are Catherine Connolly (left), Jim Gavin (centre) and Heather Humphreys (right). The last time there were as few as three candidates was 1990, when Mary Robinson was elected. The last Presidential Election had six candidates.
A number of names were touted ahead of today’s deadline for nominations, some plausible and some bizarre, but most dropped out without ever getting started. That list includes Bob Geldof, Michael Flatley of Riverdance fame, Conor McGregor (a famous rapist), a man who runs a doggy-day-care business, and a lady, whose name escapes me, who used to read the weather forecast on the telly.
Last week businessperson Gareth Sheridan also dropped out, having failed to convince enought local authorities to nominate him. The threshold for this route to nomination is very low, just 4 out of 31 – 26 County Councils, three City Councils (Dublin, Galway and Cork) and two hybrids (Limerick and Waterford). Sheridan only secured two so dropped out. I never really understood why he was standing as his company is facing litigation in the USA for fraud and breach of contract, and that would have undergone relentless scrutiny during the election campaign, so I find it strange he was willing to risk that. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now; he’s a non-runner.
The last one to drop out was ultra-conservative Catholic anti-everything campaigner Maria Steen. She went for the route of nominations from members of the Oireachtas (TDs and Senators). After frantically scraping the bottom of the barrel she came up two short of the 20 needed and dropped out just before the deadline. My worry with this reactionary person was not that Ireland would end up with her as President, but that the election campaign (which will last a month) would be dominated by her airing her bigoted views.
The three remaining candidates are: Catherine Connolly (an independent TD standing as a unified leftist) who has the support of Sinn Féin, Labour, the Social Democrats and People Before Profit. Jim Gavin is a former GAA player and football manager for Dublin and flying instructor in the Air Corps who was picked up by Fianna Fáil as their candidate (although I don’t think he was a member before the campaign started); and last;y we have the Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys. I normally react with an instant “no” to FG drones, but she is a Presbyterian, whose father was a member of an Orange Order, which would be interesting for North-South politics on the island.
Maria Steen would probably have fragmented the right-wing vote and thus favoured Connolly on first preferences, but now it’s basically a choice between one left and two right. Since FF and FG are basically equivalent, they will probably mainly transfer to each other, so if Connolly is going to win she will have to do it on first preferences.
Election day (24th October) is exactly a month away. Deciding who to vote for will be as easy as one-two-three.
PS. The bookies’ odds via Oddschecker are: Humphreys 11/10 fav; Gavin 15/8; Connolly 5/2.
In the Dark 