Ok folks, it’s showtime
Teams of strategists, volunteers, political advisers and backroom boys and girls — mostly young bright things in razor-sharp suits — are starting the day at Fianna Fáil election headquarters. “It’s like a big bus station,” says one top strategist.
They listen to the early morning news programmes, pore over the coverage in the morning newspapers and hold the first meeting to plan the day.
They soon begin writing press releases, facing the media in their leader’s press conference and keeping an eye on the party’s canvassers in every corner of the country.
Similar scenes are being repeated around the corner at Fine Gael’s election HQ and across town in Labour’s glossy election offices at Golden Lane near the old Liberties.
Behind every quest for power is an election team. And before the day of reckoning arrives, there are weeks of round-the-clock planning that starts in all party headquarters in Dublin and webs its way out to every doorstep in the country.
“Ok folks, it’s showtime!” is how the most famous practitioner of the art, Fianna Fáil election planner PJ Mara, described it. And here is how it’s played out:
GETTING the correct number of candidates on the ticket is a “vital ingredient” to a party’s electoral success according to Pat Magner who organised Labour’s campaign resulting in the “Spring Tide” election that saw the party double its seats back in 1992.
Parties start working on selecting their candidates up to a year before the polling day is named and it can be a tricky balancing act: Put too many running mates together and they will cancel out each other’s votes. But don’t put enough on the ticket and you can’t maximise your votes to get as many seats as possible.
This was the problem facing Labour who had to frantically find enough candidates to maximise their growing popularity. They ultimately decided on fielding 68 compared to 50 in 2007.
Fianna Fáil on the other hand, has been forced to whittle down its candidate list as much as possible to maximise its chances of retaining seats. It’s fielding 74 which is not even enough to form a Dáil majority — compared to 106 in 2007.
The party developed a “less is more” strategy under Bertie Ahern. In the 1997 election it reduced candidate numbers by a fifth and managed to increase its seats by nine to 77, despite having the same percentage (39%) of the vote. “In nine of the 12 Dublin constituencies, we are running less candidates than we did in 2007,” said party general secretary Sean Dorgan.
Fine Gael said it is running 102 candidates compared to 90 in 2007.
“Every one has a chance of being elected but I don’t think we’ll get all of them elected,” said party strategist Frank Flannery. “We’ve obviously made assumptions on what our share of vote is likely to be. We are quite comfortable with our candidate strategy. One too less there or one too many there can happen to anybody.”
WEEKS before the election was called, the Labour TDs were going about their Dáil business looking a touch more stylish and glamorous than usual. It was like “cleaning the house before the maid arrives” one of them explained, because they were dressing up for their one-to-one sessions with image consultants in a hotel across the road.
Image has always played a big part in the quest for power. “As far back as the Romans, people in power or seeking power put a great deal of emphasis on their appearance. People need a person of higher power to show quality and they want to be proud of the person they represent,” said Billy Dixon, an image consultant and expert on personal projection who advises many senior politicians in Britain and here.
“Safe and dependable” is the look he advises for Election 2011.
“In the past, politicians could appear very dapper, with sharp and expensive suits. This time, they will antagonise people if they look like they spent money on their looks. They have to dress more conservative and more casually,” said Dixon.
While not looking the part can damage a politician, there are risks involved in looking too polished. Just ask British Prime Minister David Cameron, who landed himself in embarrassing controversy last year when he was forced to deny his billboard ad was airbrushed.
“I have a baby face” he explained. “I’m afraid that’s what I look like.”
NEVER mind the daggers, the ladders were out within minutes of the election being called, and some managed to sneak up before that.
It’s believed 1.5 million posters will be used in this election. Mal McGowan’s Digital Print Factory in Finglas is producing around 250,000 of these, costing at least €4.50 each.
“Posters are a head office function,” Pat Magner, former national adviser of Labour under Dick Spring, explains.
“Parties would put together what is called an election pack with posters, election leaflets and car stickers.
Producing them centrally makes it cheaper, but the local organisations would then pay head office for the packs.
They are distributed to a network of trusted local teams broken down into constituencies and sub-constituencies around the country.
Election posters have been compared to christmas decorations: Everyone notices them at first but when the novelty wears off, they become part of the wallpaper. And they are “always subject to change”, says Magner.
“There comes a point when you have to renew yourself. It might be a different colour poster to try to get it noticed, or a different slogan to send out a different message,” he said.
There are strict poster rules that must be obeyed — as Hugh Coughlan, administrative officer in Dublin City Council, outlines: “The posters should be above a minimum height of 2.3m; They shouldn’t be erected on lamp stands with overhead electricity lines, or on traffic signal poles, bridge parapets, overpasses, pedestrian bridges, or roadside traffic barriers.
“They should be securely fixed with cable-ties.”
“WE saw in 2007 that campaigns matter, campaigns make a difference,” said Fianna Fáil’s Sean Dorgan.
Parties usually come up with one main theme — a case to be argued and a message to get across.
For Fianna Fáil it involves picking holes in the credibility of the Fine Gael and Labour policies and highlighting differences between the potential coalition partners or the “tug- of-war Government” as their sound bite goes.
For Labour, their big theme is change, reform and unity, for “all of us, together”, as their website states.
For Fine Gael, it is about fixing the country and “making Ireland work” and a fresh start after years of Fianna Fáil in power.
And for both Fine Gael and Labour, it’s about attacking each other to ensure they outweigh the other in a future coalition government.
Party headquarters will send out briefing notes to canvassers all over the country on what they should say to voters to keep within these themes.
A Fine Gael pamphlet, leaked to newspapers last week, showed canvassers were informed of “attack points” and how to answer certain questions.
In Fianna Fáil, the general message that goes out in the day’s press conference is distributed that day to activists and canvassers all over the country.
In most parties, meetings of strategists happen not just every morning and late at night, but throughoutthe day to discuss where each story is going and how to present their side.
“We are looking at polls, looking at trends, looking at what journalists write,” Magner said. “You have to renew”.
“ALL sorts of things can happen in elections. All sorts of things will go on and some of them will change votes and some of them won. ” warned PR guru to Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell, who spoke to the Irish Examiner last week about the forthcoming election.
There is always an element of it, and all the best strategists in the world can’t tell you what it is, because they haven’t found out yet. For Gordon Brown it was when he commented that someone he met out canvassing was a “bigoted woman” — and the remarks were caught on tape.
The most striking example here was Brian Lenihan senior’s “on mature recollection” moment in the 1990 presidential campaign when he changed his story over phone calls to the president.
Events again intervened when his colleague, Pádraig Flynn said Mary Robinson was showing a “new-found interest” in her family, and women voters turned away from Lenihan in their droves.
“The media focus is much more intense than it was in the past. There are so many things happening that the capacity to slip up is really magnified,” said Magner.
And Campbell believes the election here is all to play for yet.
“YOU can take all the computers and twitter and facebook in the world. But nothing in politics beats standing at the doorstep, answering the questions put to them by the voter,” said the former PR guru, Pat Magner.
And most party strategists agree that the good old-fashioned pounding of the pavements is still the most important ingredient in winning Dáil seats.
Magner believes the most important part of any election campaign is what he calls a “John the Baptist” figure in every area of every constituency.
“This fella would have to be known and liked and popular enough in the area,” he said. “He would go around door to door in that area with the candidate and introduce him to each household.”
This, he believes, is the best way for a party to establish a direct relationship with each and every voter.
Fianna Fáil believe that from head office they have a link to every town and every person in the country. They keep in constant contact with a network of local party organisations and activists “making sure they are getting people out to canvass and fighting for it as well.”
Bertie Ahern once said “I love tramping the streets” and described how an average politician would put in 90 hours a week canvassing during the course of the campaign.
There are accounts of his home in Drumcondra containing coloured- coded charts of every street in Dublin Central. Those canvassed once were blue, canvassed twice were red and three times were marked green.
Magner explains: “It’s an Irish thing that people take great umbrage with a politician that does not speak to them. They will always say: ‘But you never asked.’
“The face-to-face contact is crucial, and there is no substitute for that.”
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