PBP’s kamikaze campaign crowns election of ‘firsts’

Bradley Bytes – A Sort of Political Column with Dara Bradley 

Election 2020 threw up quite a few firsts in Galway West.
The constituency elected its first ever Shinner TD – Mairéad Farrell romped home with 14% of first preference votes. That means for the first time, Galway West is represented in Dáil Éireann by three women. Mervue’s Mairéad joins Catherine Connolly (Ind) and Hildegarde Naughton (FG), who were both returned. Forty-five years after the constituency’s first, and only other female TD, Máire Geoghegan Quinn broke the glass ceiling in a by-election win, Galway West is now the only constituency with a majority of women TDs.
Galway West elected three tall TDs in 2011 – Labour’s Derek Nolan, Fine Gael’s Seán Kyne (both 6ft 3” tall) and Brian Walsh (6ft). And Mairéad now has the distinction of being the first TD representing the constituency, who measured five-foot nothing. Or as Newstalk’s Seán Defoe put it: “Is Mairéad Farrell tiny or sitting down?”.
Cat Connolly became the first Galway West candidate to get an endorsement from veteran broadcaster and contrarian, Vincent Browne. The Claddagh Queen also broke 5,000 first preferences – by a long shot (5,439) – for the first time in this, her fourth General Election. On the 12th count, she reached the quota and had a surplus to redistribute for the first time ever.
Éamon Ó Cuív was the first – and only – Fianna Fáil candidate in this election who topped the poll in any of the 39 constituencies; and he was also the first FF TD who was subsequently elected to the first seat.
For first time ever, Labour’s share of the vote dipped below 3% in Galway West. Even at its previous lowest ebb in 1954 (3.1%), and again in 2016 when Derek Nolan lost a seat with just 5%, Labour always stayed about 3%. The ‘Red-Rose’ party had red faces as Níall McNelis polled just 2.6%.
But even that embarrassment paled into insignificance compared with the People Before Profit kamikaze campaign. Not only has it never happened in Galway West, but never before in the history of Irish elections has a political party issued a statement on polling day urging voters NOT to support their own candidate.
Most people planned not to vote for him anyway, but the PBP statement about Joe Loughnane was in response to a claim by his ex-partner – and Loughnane later confirmed and apologised – that he spat at her and smashed her smart-phone in an incident a year ago. It was Loughnane’s first general election – surely, it’s his last, too.

For more Bradley Bytes on Election 2020, see this week’s Galway City Tribune