Winners
After an inauspicious start, the big winner is Mary Lou McDonald and Sinn Féin.
So what if they drove people up the walls with their weeks and weeks of dithering over choosing a candidate?
There was the will-she-won’t-she mini-drama of whether party leader Mary Lou McDonald might run. Talk of various high-profile Shinners entering the race. Respected public figures from outside the party were mentioned.
And then, with everyone fed up from all the faffing about, Mary Lou ramped up expectations with the teaser promise of a “game-changer” intervention before the close of nominations.
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It would be of Match of the Day proportions.
In the end, the party didn’t field a player, plumping instead for Catherine Connolly, who had been on the pitch and under their noses for months.
Such a damp squib.
But such a good choice.
Humble guys
The Men of Humility are winners too.
That would be Fianna Fáil’s Billy Kelleher and Fine Gael’s Seán Kelly, two sitting MEPs who wanted to run for the Áras but were denied the chance by their respective leaderships.
Billy and Seán, with the utmost humility, bowed to the pleading of their many friends and supporters and decided to enter the fray.
Seán was firmly bundled off the pitch before he got a chance to make his case. With Tánaiste and party leader Simon Harris backing Heather Humphreys from the outset, a wave of senior Ministers and parliamentary party members declared their support for Heather. Once he knew he hadn’t the numbers to win, the Kerry-based MEP stepped aside for his Monaghan colleague.
Billy, meanwhile, wanted a contest and not a coronation. Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s inexplicable determination to impose Jim Gavin as Fianna Fáil candidate went down like a lead balloon outside of his cohort of acolytes with Government jobs.
Billy, with the utmost humility, went in to bat for them.
Micheál strong-armed enough backbenchers into voting for his unproven pick and Gavin, a former Air Corps pilot and successful Dublin GAA manager, became Fianna Fáil’s election poster boy.
But a whopping 29 TDs voted for Billy, which would make life difficult for the party leader should his big plan backfire.
Which it did, spectacularly, in a short-lived shambles of a campaign which may, sooner rather than later, prove the undoing of Micheál Martin, the great survivor of Irish politics.
And as reputations burned and fights broke out in the background, there stood Billy and Seán, smiling with the utmost humility and taking no pleasure whatsoever in the Coalition’s election fiasco as it unfurled in front of them.
Losers
This election was an unmitigated disaster for Micheál Martin.
After orchestrating a big build-up to the unveiling of a Fianna Fáil candidate who would sweep all before them, he said he was endorsing former Dublin football manager Jim Gavin as the party’s candidate.
His big reveal was met with a wave of indifference.
Taciturn Jim was the never the man GAA reporters would think of turning to when stuck for a decent line. But when Micheál and his mini-Micheál, Jack Chambers, looked at decent, competent Jim, they didn’t see a charisma-free zone. They saw a future president.
They should never have selected him.
He shouldn’t have run.
Jim managed two weeks before crying off. His election posters, mortifyingly for all involved, outlasted him.
The politically inexperienced Gavin endured a nightmare but he can return to his private life. The other two – the Taoiseach and his Minister for Public Expenditure – are miserable but putting a brave face on things and apologising profusely.
Maybe we should feel sorry for them.
But they are all big boys and knew what they were doing.
Now it’s a case of hubris and humble pie all round.
Left standing
There may be other losers too.
As Catherine Connolly’s campaign took off, so too did Sinn Féin’s involvement. In the closing weeks, the party’s election machine turned out for her as she toured the country, poll toppers by her side.
They said it couldn’t be done. Now Sinn Féin, as the biggest party, heads up a long-talked-about Alliance of the Left. All the groupings within it are flushed with success. It’s a case of comradeship and collegiality all around.
If this holds until the next general election, it really could be a game-changer – opening up the possibility of a new political landscape with a fully left-wing government in power for the first time.
The parties of power will lose out.
As for the triumphant smaller parties and groupings – can they survive with a reinforced and reinvigorated Sinn Féin sharing their space?
They may be proud members of an exciting new movement now, but will they be the United Left or the United Lunch, soon to be eaten alive by the Shinners?
Best to keep reminding Mary Lou that she needs their transfers to make it to the Taoiseach’s office.
Best social media campaign
Recognise anything?
Camp Connolly wiped the floor with Fine Gael.
Its social media strategy was brilliant, drawing on the template for success set down by the repeal and marriage equality referendums. The best of those campaigns could be seen in so many aspects of the Independent TD’s operation, from music to merch to the fresh promise of a new social and cultural movement for questioning voters yearning for change.
Simon Harris must have been scratching his head as CMAC (Catherine Mary Ann Connolly) powered ahead while her upbeat team of committed volunteers spread her softly-sold anti-establishment message to a receptive audience.
How are they doing it?
Back in the day, he was something of a hero to the same demographic now flocking to support Connolly – a rare position for a Government Minister.
During one set of heady celebrations in Dublin Castle as the results from count centres flowed in, a woman held up a placard proclaiming “I fancy Simon Harris”.
That was then.
This is now. How soon they forget.
Iconic objects of Campaign 2025
The bus Jack Chambers and fellow Micheál loyalists threw Jim Gavin under.
Heather’s three-string pearl necklace.
Catherine Connolly’s keepy-uppy football.
Maria Steen’s Hermès handbag.
Jim Gavin’s white trousers.
The unworn Jim Gavin camouflage T-shirts commissioned by Fianna Fáil.
Worst videos
Of all the dull videos produced by the Humphreys campaign, young Fine Gael produced one which was so awful it was funny in a most unfunny way.
It features a young man with a strange haircut standing outside a house trying to canvass the vote of a young woman through the camera on her smart doorbell.
In a mortifying take on the creepy cue card scene in Love Actually, the object of his attention seems to be half unconscious on the couch while your man drops his cardboard reasons for voting for Heather.
Definitely the worst.
The Fine Gael video after Heather’s visit to Belfast wasn’t great either. She had to apologise after somebody put up an image of the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament building in Berlin, instead of Belfast City Hall.
True to form, Jim Gavin’s first video was also a turkey.
There was general hilarity when an attempt to show his links to the farming community featured him striding through a field in pristine white chinos before he committed the ultimate sin of failing to properly close the gate behind him as he left.
Best accessorising
Oh my God, they’ve killed Maria’s dream!
A beautiful image with a heart-wrenching message went up on social media on the final day of the campaign.
It was a stunning portrait of the fragrant Maria Steen, captured for all time by top studio photographer Mark Nixon.
And beneath it, these chilling words penned by her devoted husband, Neil: “Remember what they took from you.”
What?
Oh my God. Don’t say she’s gone forever.
They took our Maria? Who took Maria? Where are they hiding her?
Poor Maria, standard-bearer for conservative Catholicism, who did everything she could to get her name on the ballot sheet except put in the hard yards like everyone else.
On the plus side, she now has seven years to prepare for the next presidential election, with a ready-made slogan already, thanks to her efforts: Entitlement.
If, heaven forbid, she is being held hostage, perhaps the Iona Institute, of which she is a leading member, could crowdfund for the ransom.
Failing that, distraught Neil can sell one of his wife’s handbags.
What with Maria claiming that she brought that hugely expensive Hermès bag to her no-nomination outrage press conference to “expose the hypocrisy of the left who don’t love the poor; they just hate the rich” and Neil’s strange “remember what they took from you” tweet, this was top-notch trolling of epic proportion.
Best slogan
Catherine Connolly had the best slogan.
It was subtle, succinct and clever: Raising Your Voice.
Catherine never raises hers.
She didn’t raise it, not even when under sustained pressure to answer key questions about a controversial trip to Syria; her employment in Leinster House of a woman with a conviction for gun crime and her work for financial institutions in house repossession case when a barrister while publicly berating the banks as an elected representative for people fighting to keep their homes.
She had another one which could mean anything: “Compassionate Diplomacy”.
Heather had a slogan which she repeated at the drop of a hat until even she couldn’t bear to listen to it any more.
What was it again?
Unity, Boonity and Hot Air Balloonity.
No. Wait now.
Spoonity, Community and Photo Opportunity.
Something like that.
Most jinxed candidate
Unlucky Jim.
After Micheál Martin said Jim Gavin had what it takes to be a Fianna Fáil president (despite subsequent claims he was a Fine Gael man before the Taoiseach came a wooing), the party handlers finally let their candidate out to interact with the public and the media. It didn’t go well.
There were toe-curling television appearances. And an incident involving Gavin – Chief Operations Officer of the Irish Aviation Authority – and an unlicensed drone.
He was doing a park run with Jack Chambers at the time, but for the sake of completeness, Chambers of Commerce is licensed to drone.
Then vile and scurrilous lies about his personal life were spread on social media, further blighting the whole ill-fated enterprise.
Jim’s ailing campaign was finally put out of its misery when it emerged he owed over €3,000 in overpaid rent to the tenant of a house he rented out a number of years ago.
Despite repeated requests for the money to be repaid, he didn’t pony up.
This revelation was the final straw. Gavin’s race was run. He withdrew. And repaid the money owed.
The tenant went on to become a successful news journalist.
Of all the out-of-pocket tenants of all the candidates in all the presidential campaigns in all the world, the deputy editor of the Sunday World walked into his.
How unlucky is that?
Best woulda-rans
Bertie Ahern spent the long months in the run-up to the election campaign saying he didn’t think he’d run. Ah, sure he probably wouldn’t get the nomination in anyway even if he was even half minded to go. At least that’s what he told us.
Then he was given the cold shoulder by Micheál. Bertie was raging. He was all set to go, apparently. Been planning his campaign for God knows how long, even though people around him always played dumb when asked if this was the case.
He’s been in a monumental sulk ever since.
Bob Geldof popped up on the last day as well, declaring he would have “walked it” had Micheál chosen him to contest the election instead of plumping for Unlucky Jim.
But it was just as well as he has a lot on his plate and he would have to move over here and it would have been a terrible bother.
It was just a figary, really. Not like he’s been eyeing up the Áras for the last 30 years.
Ray Kavanagh, former general secretary of the Labour Party, wrote in his memoir about an away day meeting the party held in Mullingar in September 1997.
“First of all, Michael D Higgins let it be known that he was available as a candidate for the presidency: an offer that did not receive much support. He did strike a chord, however, when he said that the idea of the Labour Party supporting Bob Geldof scratching himself for seven years in the park was offensive.
“Pat Upton suspected that Fergus Finlay was flying a kite for Geldof, as there had been reports of his candidacy on Sky News and on the Vincent Browne show on radio. Fergus denied this rumour, but said that Geldof had telephoned him.”
Fancy.
Michael D knew how to play the long game.
