When Senator Michael McDowell was assembling his “lawyers for no” group ahead of last year’s referendums on “women in the home” and the definition of the family, one of his first calls was to Maria Steen.
The Senator had had a particularly difficult time putting the ad hoc group together. At their launch event in Buswells hotel, he was the star of the show. Sat immediately to his left was one of only three other lawyers who joined him at the top table of movement: Maria Steen. On his other flank was practicing barrister and Daily Mail and Sunday Times columnist Brenda Power. Also at the top of the room was then TD (now MEP) and Barrister Micheal McNamara. Footage of the event is below.
As the campaign went on, Steen and McDowell became leading voices, working closely together. But one notable flashpoint came when RTE invited Maria Steen to take part in the “showcase” final debate of the campaign, against Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
There were several figures, McDowell amongst them, who thought that Steen doing the debate was a very bad idea and believed that she should decline the invitation on the basis that RTE, in their view, was trying to set the debate up in a particular way that would disadvantage the “no” side by pitting “progressive” Micheál Martin against a figure like Steen who had campaigned for a “no” vote on both gay marriage and abortion.
RTE had not offered the debate to McDowell, but there was a feeling amongst some people in the campaign at the time that if everybody else refused to do the debate, RTE would have no choice but to offer him – or someone else with a “yes yes” voting record – the slot.
In the event Steen took soundings from various people close to her about whether she should proceed with the debate, and was convinced that she would do well. As things turned out, she did do well, and her performance was widely credited with accelerating momentum towards a “no no” vote in the final week of the campaign.
When Steen entered the Presidential campaign a few weeks ago, one of her very first calls, I am told, was to Senator McDowell. That call went unanswered, as did several text messages and emails requesting a meeting.
In recent weeks, the Senator has been inundated with requests from close political allies, friends, and colleagues to facilitate Steen’s nomination, in addition to what is understood to have been a considerable (and spontaneous) campaign of emails from ordinary members of the public lobbying him and other parliamentarians to back Steen. Almost all those who contacted McDowell who had formerly warm relations with him report that their texts and calls went unanswered. As of 10pm last night, he had still refused so much as to take a call from Mrs. Steen, in what another Senator – himself also not nominating Mrs Steen – called “incredible discourtesy”. “The party wouldn’t let me back her”, that Senator said, “but I owed her an explanation and I gave it. Michael’s rudeness was incredible.”
Indeed, the Steen campaign fell short because of the unwillingness of three Senators in total to offer her support. These were McDowell, along with two Senators perceived to be his closest political allies in the Seanad – Gerard Craughwell, and fellow ex-PD Victor Boyhan. Craughwell made unconvincing claims that his refusal to back Steen was connected to a “campaign of intimidation” on social media. Boyhan is not on social media.
A third close McDowell ally was perhaps the biggest headache for the Steen campaign, though he provided her final signature this morning.
The difficulty in securing Aubrey McCarthy’s signature came as a surprise to the Steen campaign as the Senator is avowedly pro-life in private, and discreetly called in the aid of the Pro-Life campaign to seek election to the Seanad last year. That organisation’s members, including Pro-Life Campaign Campaign Manager Eilis Mulroy, organised lists of pro-life voters on the Trinity Seanad roll and actively sought their votes on behalf of McCarthy. His was one of the first names on the Steen target list.
Indeed, Senator McCarthy promised his vote to Steen – or agents acting on her behalf – on no less than three occasions. I can reveal that in recent weeks, he has always been “vote number 18” – the promised but undelivered vote cited by Peadar Toibin and others in public statements of Steen campaign support. Every other parliamentarian who promised a vote – including Marian Harkin who signed Steen’s papers last week but asked that her participation be kept quiet while she attended to a family matter – kept their promise.
In the end, Aubrey McCarthy emerges from the period as the Steen camp’s number two explanation for their failure after McDowell. A meeting between McCarthy and Steen last evening was described by sources familiar with it as “fractious” and “difficult”. In the end, he provided a signature on the nomination form after 10am this morning – well past the hour at which it might have been of some use.
“He completely shafted us”, was the verdict of one of Steen’s closest advisors. “He clearly was only ever going to give the signature once it was clear that she could not make the 20. If she had 19 signatures without him, I am utterly convinced he would not have signed. This morning was about saving face and being able to pretend to his pro life team that he was on side. But he was never with us, and caused us nothing but trouble.”
The record bears this out: Over the past week, sources close to McCarthy had given repeated briefings to journalists that he would not sign, while telling the Steen camp that he would. This caused repeated skepticism in the press about the Steen campaign’s own numbers, even though those numbers and those promulgated by Peadar Toibin – 18 locked down votes – proved entirely accurate. They simply failed to get the final two.
The mood in the Steen campaign last night was one of befuddlement: In the pre-election war-gaming, they had always felt that they could secure 17 votes, but those votes included the support of three of the “McDowell four”. The Harkin and Healy-Rae nominations, they felt, should have been enough to push her over the line. There had been no indication before the campaign that McDowell would be anything other than receptive to a conversation with Steen.
One source tells me that in private conversation, McDowell insisted that Steen’s links to the Iona Institute were a dealbreaker for him – but this is not entirely convincing. Those links, after all, expired over seven years ago, which was the last time that Mrs. Steen acted as a spokeswoman for Iona. The “Iona links” had not stopped him recruiting her to Lawyers for No. And indeed, this writer was present over a decade ago at an Iona Institute event in the Davenport Hotel in Dublin where the guest speaker was a prominent lawyer and former Attorney General, then known as Michael McDowell SC.
Even if we are to take those concerns at face value, they are slightly bizarre: McDowell was not being asked to make Steen President, but to put her on the ballot. Indeed, his ideological arch-enemy and fellow Irish Times Columnist, Fintan O’Toole, was generous enough of spirit to write that in his view, Steen was a serious candidate who should be on the ballot. Michael Healy-Rae and Marian Harkin both nominated her whilst making clear that their votes in the election would go to Heather Humphreys. And McDowell has had made no public comment on the presence on the ballot of Catherine Connolly, a woman whose views are so extreme that she struggled this week to mount a convincing condemnation of Hamas.
One text from a McDowell confidante to this reporter, this week, read simply “It seems that Michael thinks being sanguine on Hamas is fine, while they throw gay people from buildings, but that disagreeing with him on gay marriage a decade ago is a dealbreaker”.
Perhaps understandably, several McDowell supporters who spoke to this reporter in recent days speculated that his motives for blocking Steen were more base: “If she were to win”, one said, “it would have been said that the referendum campaigns launched her as Presidential material. And for Michael that would have been intolerable. In his mind those were his referendums. His win. And she would have gotten retrospective credit for it”.
Whatever the reason, McDowell and his closest political confidantes, more than anyone else in Irish politics, are the reason that Maria Steen is not on the ballot today. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael locked down the county council route, doing for Gareth Sheridan and Nick Delehanty and a host of other hopefuls. But in the Oireachtas, it was McDowell and his allies alone who ensured that there would only be three candidates on the ballot.
As of yet, he has issued no public statement on his reasoning. A lengthy text from this reporter last night setting out the contents of this article and seeking a statement on his reasoning was read, but not acknowledged.
Reflecting on the campaign, a Steen campaign employee told this reporter last night that they were proud: “We didn’t make it, but we came a lot closer than people thought we might. There was a deeply co-ordinated campaign against her by both the parties, and by one particular Senator. And she emerges from it all a dignified and enhanced figure. We hope she’ll be back in seven years, or sooner”.
Either way, the public’s choices are now clear: It’s Humphreys, Gavin, or Connolly. You can cast your ballot on October 24th.