An overnight success for Michael D – it took just over 40 years to achieve it

Date Published: {J}

It is the recurring nightmare of politicians that their careers are dominated by the figures from the last election. Any politician will admit that even within weeks of being elected they find themselves idly ploughing through the ballot box returns even in their own neighbourhoods.

God knows, Michael D Higgins has done enough of this since he first stood for Labour in Galway West in 1969. But in the past week the figures compared to 42 years ago must come as a sheer joy.

‘Overnight success’ in his case took 42 years – back in 1969 he got a total vote of 1,100 … last week the figure came back exponentially increased, over 700,000 first preferences and by the time he was elected it had edged over one million.

Though he had success in Galway West over the years Michael D knows the hard slog of elections lost. He stood first in 1969 where his vote came in at 1,174 and he found himself battling among major names like Bobby Molloy, Johnny Geoghegan, John Mannion and Fintan Coogan, not to mention his own running mate in the Labour Party Tom Tierney who got 1,519 votes.

That was the era when the hopes of Labour were being carried by people like Tom Tierney, James Cox (‘Cox of the silver tongue’) and Michael Smyth all of whom struggled away manfully in a constituency where Fianna Fáil dominated.

The first ‘overnight success’ came for Michael D in the 1981 General Election but in between he stood in 1973 where he got 3346 votes, and in 1977 totalled 4,952 and watched his vote build slowly to the point where in 1981 he finally made it to the Dáil with 6,226 votes, finishing third in the first preferences but second elected with a host of electoral high profile performers around him like Robbie Molloy, Mark Killillea, John Donnellan and Maire Geogheghan Quinn.

That was the time when we had three elections within 18 months and was one of the few times when I personally fell out with Michael D over his electoral approach and tactics.

At the time there was a strong ‘inter-party’ mood within the country among Fine Gael and Labour supporters, with a tendency to transfer to each other being part of “the machinery” to occasionally get rid of Fianna Fáil for a few years.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.