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A WEEK BEFORE voters went to the polls, a group of disabled people and carers gathered in Dublin City University to hear from Catherine Connolly.
Journalist and disability activist Emma Ward spoke of her experience living with scoliosis. She spoke of how she believes disabled people in Ireland have been forgotten, but how Catherine Connolly has given her hope.
She said she hoped and prayed the “fierce woman from Galway” would be elected president.
The same sentiment, that Connolly was a figure who represented hope, was echoed again and again as different carers and people living with disabilities took to the floor to share their experiences.
“And hope is really important,” an older gentleman in the audience said.
Later that day, as she canvassed in Finglas and Ballymun, children gave Connolly flowers, requested photographs and thrust school books at her to autograph.
“You’ll do 100 keepie uppies for me now,” Connolly joked with one teenage girl as she handed her back the autographed book.
A group of teenage boys stood somewhat shyly to the side of the large group that had gathered around Connolly outside the Supervalu in Finglas. One of them answered a phone call: “I’ll ring you back, I’m just in the middle of something… meeting the President.”
It was the day after the Irish Times/Ipsos poll put her far ahead of Heather Humphreys at 38% to 20% and not only was there a palpable sense of optimism among her supporters and the people she met, but a feeling that she had already won.
Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore knew there was something unusual about Catherine Connolly’s campaign from the moment she first publicly declared her support for her.
“I posted on Facebook, which is usually dead, and I got like 2,000 likes on it. When I saw that I said, okay this is big,” Whitmore told The Journal.
“My 90-year-old mother was backing her, my 18-year-old son, lots of different people in my life, and they were all backing her for different reasons.”
Supporters of Connolly have pointed to a variety of things when asked what they believe led to her overwhelming success in this election.
Some of the standout features of Connolly’s campaign have been a strong and capable core team around an authentic candidate, the slick and original branding, an impactful social media presence with organic viral moments and an army of volunteers.
One of the most notable things about Connolly as a candidate was that even if people did not agree with her stances on issues, there was little doubt that she was being true to what she believed. And to voters, this mattered.
Connolly consistently said during the campaign that she was merely the symbol of a wider movement.
At her campaign launch in Dublin on September 23, she spoke of wanting to empower people, wanting to encourage people to realise the power that they have and encouraging them to use their voice and demand answers.
Connolly may have only formally launched her campaign at the end of September, but she secured the required 20 nominations from Oireachtas members in mid-July, making her the second candidate to enter the race after Fine Gael’s Mairead McGuinness the day before.
The initial team around her was small. Her Oireachtas parliamentary assistant, Béibhinn O’Connor, acted as campaign manager for Connolly for the course of the election (not TD Paul Murphy, as was claimed by Heather Humphreys) and was assisted by a small group of paid staff and a large group of volunteers.
From the outset, Connolly had a clear vision of the campaign she wanted to run.
When the Labour Party suggested that she undertake some media training, it was a firm no from the candidate.
She was hands-on without micromanaging, according to those who worked with her.
“No significant leaflet went out without her sign-off,” one person involved in the campaign said.
Some staffers from the Social Democrats and People Before Profit were seconded over to Team Connolly to assist, while Claire McGowran, who works on campaigns and communications at The Wheel, was the driving force behind the social media campaign. Journalist Aoife Moore was brought in as a press and media consultant (Moore is credited by some for the campaign’s clever use of podcasts).
The first few weeks were all about building up structures and templates – choosing the branding, setting out a social media style and putting the organisation in place to sustain the campaign.
“At the beginning, you wondered how quickly and fast it would grow – nobody could have predicted the way the campaign went,” one person involved told The Journal.
The campaign relied heavily on the skills and enthusiasm of volunteers.
For example, the campaign’s distinctive Celtic-themed branding, which was inspired by the traditional hand-painted signs of the 18th to the 20th century, was designed by cultural producer and designer Anna Cassidy, who volunteered her services to the campaign.
Merch that was designed by Cassidy and made available to purchase via the siopa tab on the Connolly for President website became a huge success for the campaign and had to be restocked a number of times.
From laptop and car stickers to tote bags, t-shirts and sweatshirts, voters could show their support with a purchase and help the campaign two-fold via a monetary contribution and by virtue of becoming a walking advertisement for the campaign.
Scarves were also designed by Kildare-based artist Aoife Cawley and sold via the campaign website. With the slogan ‘Guth Na nDaoine’ embroidered on one side, they were another nod to Connolly’s advocacy for the Irish language.
There was also the boots on the ground: the people who went out leafleting, knocking on doors, and getting out the vote in the weeks leading up to the campaign. On count day, Paul Murphy claimed that “over 15,000 people volunteered to join the campaign”.
“The majority of those, the big majority, were not members of any political party.”
Alongside the work of volunteers, Connolly’s team also tapped into the resources of the political parties that backed her.
People Before Profit and the Social Democrats were on board from day one, while the Labour Party joined later in August.
For weeks, a question mark hung over the intentions of Sinn Féin, with party leader Mary Lou McDonald promising a “gamechanger” to the election once the party announced its decision.
On September 19, the Green Party declared its backing of Connolly, and a day later, so did Sinn Féin.
This was a turning point for the campaign, with the largest party in Opposition able to provide a large volume of people and resources.
Standards in Public Office (Sipo) rules limited the financial backing each party could offer the Connolly campaign, but the parties found ways around this.
Some encouraged their elected representatives to donate individually, while across the board, party members donated their time and used their existing structures to get feet on the ground across the country.
They also donated campaign materials: the Labour Party provided cardboard for election posters.
Each week, the liaisons from each of the parties would meet with Team Connolly to strategise, and this ramped up to twice a week as the polling date drew closer.
After some teething issues at the start, things settled, and by all accounts, the parties – including 100% Redress TD Charles Ward and PBP-Solidarity TD Ruth Coppinger - worked well together.
“I don’t want to make it sound like the Waltons, but I really don’t have any drama to report,” one TD told The Journal.
People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy, who was the liaison for his party, said: “There were sections of the media who were waiting to write the story of left-implode from the beginning, and that didn’t happen.
“The truth is, we did work very well together.”
Likewise, Labour’s liaison, TD Ciarán Ahern, said “people left their politics at the door”.
Indeed, he even got some heat from his own party after he defended TD Paul Murphy.
Sinn Féin’s point person for the campaign, TD Matt Carthy, went one further and said it was one of the most enjoyable campaigns he has been involved in.
Carthy said the structures that were put in place worked well, and he praised the team Connolly had put in place before Sinn Féin got involved.
He believes there was a recognition of what each political party brought to the campaign.
“We were allowed to play to those strengths. I would argue Sinn Féin made a big impact in terms of overall structure and the political direction. We were able to play that role without taking the core campaign Catherine put in place off its tracks.
Carthy said there was also a recognition of the different audiences or sections of the electorate each political party spoke to.
“For example, there would have been a recognition that Sinn Féin speaks to working-class and rural constituencies more so than other parties. Then coming together it meant you had a very broad base of support.”
On what’s next for the collaboration on the left, Carthy said:
“What we’ve shown now is opposition parties can work together, we can work well together, and I think that’s important to voters, and I think that will continue.
“We will be seizing opportunities to work with all other opposition parties from here on out.”
Likewise, the Social Democrats’ point person, TD Jennifer Whitmore, said the whole campaign was a positive experience and reinforced the idea that the parties on the Left can work together.
“I think a lot of people are getting a lot of hope from it”, the Wicklow TD said.
One of the standout moments in the campaign came when former Fine Gael minister turned broadcaster, Ivan Yates, said that if he was still involved in Fine Gael, he would advise them to “smear the bejaysus” out of Connolly.
The party would never admit it, but Fine Gael did certainly lean more on negative campaigning than Connolly’s team did (although Humphreys was quick to distance herself from Yates, saying she “doesn’t even listen to his show”).
In Whitmore’s view, Fine Gael’s combative approach and attack video helped boost Connolly in the polls.
“Irish people don’t like negative campaigning. It’s not who we are.
“Catherine kept calm and didn’t involve herself in it, and I think that really helped.”
There were a number of issues that Connolly was repeatedly questioned on: her trip to Syria in 2018; somewhat clunky comments about Hamas and separately about Germany; her work as a barrister representing banks in home repossession cases, and her decision to hire a woman with a gun conviction from the Special Criminal Court.
There were even a few days when there was war among politicians over whether she would hypothetically employ a rapist (she wouldn’t).
Ultimately, though, these issues didn’t halt Connolly’s success.
“Catherine herself had a very strong view of the type of campaign she wanted to run and everyone signed up to it,” Sinn Féin’s Matt Carthy told The Journal.
“There was a plan in place from the start, a strategy, and when you compare it to Fine Gael, theirs didn’t play to the strengths of their candidate,” he argued.
He added:
“The more hysterical Fine Gael got, the more presidential Catherine looked.”
On what happens now with the energy and goodwill that was poured into Connolly’s campaign, Carthy and the other liaisons from the parties were optimistic.
However, don’t hold your breath if you think they will keep this collaboration up through to the next election.
Asked if this presidential campaign has been a sort of ‘training ground’ for the next general election, Carthy said:
“I wouldn’t overstate it, every campaign is unique in its own right.”
There is, however, the sense that Catherine has ‘tapped into’ a new kind of campaign.
Throughout her campaign, she drew on the themes of femininity and the strength of the Irish language and how the power of both has historically been feared.
Intangible as some of that might be, the idea that Connolly has rallied a movement is certainly something her backers believed.
As Whitmore put it:
“I think there is a cultural revolution happening, or the seeds of it, in the country.
“You go onto Facebook or TikTok, and kids are learning Irish, talking Irish. There’s this real connection with our culture that’s coming from young people.
“Maybe revolution is too strong a word, but there is this real cultural awakening happening and Catherine has tapped into that.”
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