Over the past 48 hours, there has been – correctly – considerable public disquiet at the failure of Maria Steen to secure a Presidential nomination.
It is understandable that this has occurred. A significant reason for the disquiet, I think, is that she represented at the time of her elimination from the contest the last hope for anything other than the three-candidate stitch up that our political establishment has now succeeded in foisting on us.
Much has been written about the Steen campaign here and elsewhere. But it obscures the fact that she is not the only person in this campaign to have been unjustly treated. Nick Delehanty and Gareth Sheridan were both also shafted. And shafted is the correct word.
Of Mr. Sheridan I can say that there was little of his campaign that excited me. But that hardly matters: There is little doubt that he was and remains a perfectly qualified candidate for the job of President who had much to offer the role.
The Office of President is not, after all, a political one. Whether you agreed or disagreed with Sheridan on whatever issue was not especially important. He is a young and relatively successful Irish entrepreneur with ties to the vital American start-up sector. He speaks the language of Silicon Valley. He is presentable, and by all accounts a good family man. He speaks fluently and articulately.
The purpose of the nomination process is patently to weed out candidates who are unsuitable and whose victory in the election is vastly unlikely. Conor McGregor, for example, never mounted a serious campaign and had, besides, the shadow (he still maintains unfairly) of sexual misconduct hanging over his head. Other candidates had little to no public profile or organised campaign.
Sheridan had a clean record, an organised campaign, and took the time to invest heavily (in terms of time) in the Council route. He did everything that Maria Steen has been accused of, by some pundits, of not doing: He campaigned for months, wore out his shoe leather, sat and listened to councillors, and…. Got nowhere. Not because of the demerits of his campaign, but because Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – with the active connivance of parties of the left – decided that they did not want to risk an independent on the ballot in the current political climate.
Look at the three candidates we have, and tell me honestly, that Gareth Sheridan could not have won. I suspect you cannot do it. Regardless of whether you think he is a “conservative” or not.
As for Delehanty, he too was patently a serious candidate. Like Sheridan, he took the time (though not as much time) to go around the country and listen to councillors and seek their support. Like Steen, he would have added a very different voice to the ticket. He would have represented generational change, and offered disillusioned voters a choice.
In 1997, County Councillors afforded a man called Derek Nally a chance to contest the election. Nally was – and I mean no disrespect to people who have completed his career path – a retired Garda Sergeant of no particular prominence. He had done some work with victims of crime, and had at one time been high up in the association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors. The public had no real idea who he was, and he ended up winning just 4.7% of the vote. Five County Councils nominated him.
My point is this: If Nally was qualified to be on a Presidential Ballot in 1997, then Delehanty and Sheridan were equally qualified to be on one in 2025. I suspect that either one of them, had they been candidate number four in this election, would have done significantly better than Nally’s 4.7% of the vote.
And that, of course, is precisely why neither man made it.
Full disclosure: I know and like Mrs. Steen. I do not know either Mr. Sheridan or Mr. Delehanty (though have spoken to the latter, at least). What I do know about both of them is that they would have made perfectly defensible additions to the Presidential Ballot. And I know why both of them were blocked – it is for the same reason that Mrs. Steen was blocked. Either of them could have won.
In recent days, Independent Ireland have called for reform of the nomination process. But the problem with that is that is misdiagnoses the problem: The nomination process for President has worked fine in previous elections. A whole host of no-hoper candidates have made past ballots, people like Adi Roche, Gay Mitchell, Mary Davis, and Gavin Duffy have made the ballot in recent elections.
What changed this time was not the process. What changed was the fear of our political parties who convinced themselves – I believe accurately – that this was an election they were likely to lose if anyone from outside the political system got on the ballot.
The problem here is not the system. The problem is a political system full to the brim of people terrified that if the public were given the right to choose, it would not have chosen them.