Often in politics, your closest ally can also be your greatest rival. So it was for Michael D Higgins and Catherine Connolly in the spring of 2007, when the Labour veteran and the party’s rising star locked horns in Galway West.
Having joined Labour just after the 1997 general election, a campaign in which her brother Peter had canvassed for Higgins, Connolly appeared to be Higgins’s appointed successor in Galway city.
Elected to Galway City Council on her first attempt in 1999, Connolly was moved by Labour to the ultraconservative south ward for the 2004 election; she became the first left-leaning politician to be elected among the leafy suburbs of Salthill and Knocknacarra.
It was a seismic election for Galway.
RM Block
Largely on the back of Connolly’s personal popularity, Labour brought home a record four councillors, including her sister Colette.
This, alongside breakthrough elections for the Green Party and Sinn Féin, heralded the end of generations of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael dominance in the city.
But for Connolly, that was just the start. She was determined to test herself on the national stage. However, it was not to be in the 2007 general election – or, at least, not as a Labour candidate.
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The decision by Labour not to put her on the ballot for Galway West prompted Connolly to leave the party and embark on an ultimately successful career as an Independent.
Former Green Party senator Niall Ó Brolcháin, who contested both the 2004 local and 2007 general elections in the same constituency as Connolly, said Higgins “didn’t have a generous bone in his body” when it came to Connolly.
“She is a tough politician. She doesn’t mince her words and she is well able to play politics. No more than Michael D,” he said.
“She had the courage to go Independent. She wanted to run as a second [Labour] candidate and Michael D wouldn’t have it. She left the party as a result of that.
“I wasn’t in Labour obviously but I knew them all very well. There was a lot of fallout, but they didn’t fall out completely. I think there was mutual respect between them. I think, to be honest, Michael D had fought hard himself to get elected. There wasn’t a generous bone in Michael D’s body. I think he would have been afraid that Catherine would have taken his seat.”
While Connolly secured just 2,000 first-preference votes in that election (the quota was 9,183), Ó Brolcháin believes that figure would have been much higher if she had been Michael D’s running mate.
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“He was never like Garret FitzGerald, who would have taken a hit himself to try and get two seats,” he said. “Michael D came up the hard way and he was damn well going to fight for himself ahead of anybody else. He wasn’t generous towards Catherine. He didn’t bring her forward in the way that she might have liked. Was there fallout? There was, but not too much.”
A spokesman for President Higgins declined to comment on those remarks.
Connolly grew up in a Galway that is very different from the Galway of today. One of 14 siblings, the daughter of a carpenter and shipbuilder, she was reared in the working-class neighbourhood of Shantalla on the city’s west side.
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John McDonagh, a childhood neighbour of the family and Connolly’s director of elections during her first campaign in 1999, said she showed early signs of her political potential. He remembers her as a teenager in the early 1970s, leading a successful campaign to have tennis courts built in working-class Shantalla.
“That was a huge achievement in a very working-class neighbourhood at the time. She always had the interests of the people and the community at heart,” he said.
Her time on Galway City Council was one of great change for the city. There were proposals to build an incinerator on the docks and the first incarnation of the Galway ring road, both of which she opposed, and plans for houses upon houses as the Celtic Tiger approached its eventual overload.
Connolly had to fight a losing battle in her first term at the local authority when she and her Labour colleague, Tom Costello, were continuously outvoted on motions. In 2004, however, she led a resurgent Labour into a power-sharing agreement with Fine Gael and Independents, becoming the first Labour mayor since Michael D Higgins almost 15 years earlier.
One of her greatest rivals during that period was Fine Gael’s Pádraig Conneely. Politicians with very different world views, the pair regularly clashed inside and outside council chambers.
“She was difficult. She was anti-everything. I never saw her doing anything positive. She would oppose everything. She was difficult to deal with, a difficult lady,” said Conneely. “She was not very co-operative. She took a stand on a lot of stuff. I think a lot of councillors were a bit afraid of her. She would shout them down.
“But I adopted a different attitude; I took her on on everything. So myself and herself wouldn’t be that friendly. I challenged her on a lot of stuff, and she didn’t like to be challenged.”
According to Ó Brolcháin, Connolly was part of a new wave of Galway politicians at this time, a left-leaning group who had to fight for their place at the table.
“The way it was in Galway at the time, the officials were very focused on the conservative side of things. So Catherine was persona non grata for a while,” he said.
“There was a bit of a siege mentality for anyone who wasn’t a conservative. So she did struggle. She fought very hard, she was a good fighter.”
When Connolly left the Labour Party in 2007, she left many of her closest grassroots supporters behind her.
Her sister Colette went on to contest the 2009 and 2014 local elections in the red of Labour, before becoming an Independent herself.
When Connolly secured the endorsement of Labour to contest the presidency earlier this year, it represented something of a healing moment for the party in Galway.
Indeed, this campaign marks that first time that Connolly’s long-time friend and neighbour McDonagh, a Labour stalwart, will be able to canvass for her since the local elections in 2004.
“I am very happy to canvass and support her. Her track record over the years speaks for itself. She has never been afraid to speak out on the issues of the day,” he said.
“She is a person of principle. When she speaks you know that it is honest and from the heart. I think that she would make a fantastic president.”
