Dark horse is failing to make late challenge

NOT so long ago, Mary Davis was the dark horse.

If anybody was to emerge from the pack and seriously challenge Michael D Higgins, the smart money said it would be Davis.

She had all the attributes required for a proper tilt at the prize. At a time of disdain for conventional politics, she is an independent. Her background is in advocating for people with disabilities through the Special Olympics, including directing the world games when they came to Ireland in 2003.

She is highly presentable, even if the airbrushed Special K posters depict her in an even more favourable light. Her campaign, while independent, is highly professional and motivated. Her long-standing involvement with the Special Olympics has given her access to a network right across the country, many of whom admire her hugely for highlighting disability when it is often ignored in official circles.

She also has access to serious advice and ‘big name’ supporters. It’s not by accident that she has consistently used phrases replete with buzz words beloved of PR types.

“I want to play a leadership role in making change happen,” she said on launching her campaign.

Her husband is a serious honcho in the PR industry and one of her big supporters is Denis O’Brien.

Former footballer Niall Quinn publicly endorsed her last week.

Her other attribute is that her name is Mary and she is a woman and sure, look what the last two Marys did for the country and we couldn’t go wrong there.

The only problem with the former dark horse is that she is lingering in the pack. Round about now, less than three weeks out from polling day, she would want to be coming up strong on the outside, and there is no sign of her.

The two opinion polls released last week must have come as something of a shock. The Irish Times poll had her holding her own at a steady 12%, but that’s nowhere near enough to propel her to front of the race.

The Red C poll released last Thursday was worse, showing her at only 9% and fading to sixth in a field of seven runners.

On the ground she is receiving a warm response, but nothing to set the world alight. At the weekend, she toured the shopping centres that ring the M50 in Dublin. At Liffey Valley, her supporters were togged out in T-shirts and wielding blue Mary balloons, and Mary lollypops in a rainbow of colours.

She moves through the throng with grace. Some shoppers approach her of their own volition, but most are lined up for a greeting by her supporters, who run ahead to spread the word of her tour.

Two men whom she meets bring up issues. One has a problem with compulsory Irish in schools, the other with the treatment of elderly people in winter. She handles both with grace, offering support for the point of view, but qualifying her response with the rider that the President can’t do anything directly.

An elderly woman seated in the concourse is approached directly by the candidate. She lifts her glasses. “Oh sorry, I didn’t recognise you,” she says.

A younger woman did recognise her.

“Can I get an airbrushed photo like that,” she says, looking at the campaign leaflet. But then she says that, after an examination, Mary looks just like the photo.

Requests for photos come thick and fast, and Davis obliges everywhere. She is good with people, which is as you might expect.

A local woman, Mary Kenny, urges the candidate to do something about the constraints of the office.

“I asked her would she change a few things, rather than just cutting ribbons,” said Mrs Kenny. Would Davis get the nod from this voter? “I’d probably vote for Higgins,” she says. “But I’ll think about it.”

AS SHE strides out through the centre, Davis is flanked for the most part by her two daughters. One or other of them usually places a protective arm around her mother’s back.

“I’m looking for support,” she tells each voter she meets. Some are non-committal, others tell her straight up she is sorted.

Among her team, there is a discernible effort to talk up positivity. This is the type of talk that usually infects campaigns in which doubt is leaking into confidence.

And if a reminder was needed about why the polls were not showing better for the candidate, it is available smiling out from a number of the rubbish bins in the centre. For plastered thereon are little posters for Sean Gallagher, the man who decries posters on ESB poles, but has no such reservations about bins.

Gallagher is the new dark horse, making ground exactly where Davis planned to at this juncture. What has gone wrong?

Her performance in the TV debates was competent, but couldn’t be termed inspiring. There is little doubt that her momentum has been checked by the “quango queen” revelations that she was paid €190,000 over the last decade from state appointments, along with another large wedge from business bodies, including the Bank of Ireland’s mortgage arm. The news unfairly portrayed her as a Fianna Fáil crony, but the revelations, along with the publicity surrounding her salary of €160,000 at Special Olympics, did her damage.

Some now regard her not as the outsider whom she portrayed herself, but as a member of the elite, who can pull in more than two hundred grand a year from public or charitable money annually. This has robbed her of one of her main selling points.

To turn things around from here would require a confluence of events to impact negatively on rivals and positively on her own campaign. She could retrieve the colours of the dark horse, but it’s a long shot at this stage.