Terry Prone: Nothing quite like the silent calm of career extinction for election losers
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Two different emotional worlds. One occupied by us media folk, rushing between radio and TV studios, making judgments, arguing statistics, explaining seat losses and gains, high as the proverbial kite on adrenalin and self-importance.
The other occupied by the politicians in their local count centres, some of them still not elected as we enter this new week.
Watching the long paper scarves of voters’ intentions being sorted and re-sorted while they hope their pile gets a bit higher than the pile of another candidate’s votes, their insides crimped by the need to pretend optimism.
In an even worse section of that emotional world are the politicians who have lost. Either lost their existing seat or lost their chances of occupying a Dáil seat or their hard-won high office.
The uncertainty may be the worst thing. Worse even than the sentence of expulsion.
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Once a candidate listens to the returning officer eliminate them, that announcement ushers them into a sequence of manageable inevitabilities.
They dance a ritual dance, those unfortunates who know for sure they’re not going to make it.
No strong men grabbing them around the thigh to lift them shoulder high. No thumbs raised, no high fives. No pile of warm approving bodies.
Instead, the few indelibly faithful pat them helplessly on the back and stand away to allow them to do the perp walk to get in front of the RTÉ cameras where they stand and wait until the studio discussions are put to one side to allow them their three minutes.
God love them, they always start by thanking their friends and supporters. And should probably end there, because participating in one’s own post-mortem dissection is rarely productive.
Talking about achievements notched up, when the personification of those achievements has been roundly rejected by the electorate, is as sad as placing an old phone on the top of a coffin to commemorate the connectedness of the dead.
The parade of the losers is dealt with by the media presenters in a manner close to Albert Pierrepoint’s approach to executing criminals: once the pre-departure rituals have been observed and the weight measured for the drop, speed is of the essence.
They stand in front of the camera, do those unfortunates, with grey faces on them.
That two-second pause before they get to answer the brightly-dressed presenter allows the concentration of more misery than seems possible in so short a time.
They talk; then they’re gone. Still central in their own lives, but electoral roadkill to media.
If they are famous for any reason, some analysis may be devoted to their failure. And that’s invariably how it is described.
Unimaginable, the rage and sadness they must experience as they head home in their cars, hearing on radio the condemnation of their campaign and person delivered by “experts” they may never have met.
The ones who were going for a seat they hadn’t held up to that point are often baffled by the sudden absence of interest in them.
Up to election day, they were surrounded by party VIPs, rolling up one after another in support of the newcomer, backed up by local VIPs, introducing them on the doorsteps with convinced enthusiasm.
Now, the fear of loser contagion keeps people away from them. Nothing quite like the silent calm of career extinction.
Up to election day, they will have been twitchy because of the strange will-they-won’t-they reality of canvassing: one person beckoning them from three houses away with a furious urgency.
This because a door has actually opened to reveal an actual human of probable voting age, and the opportunity to reach and woo such a human must not be missed.
Meanwhile, other canvassers are stuffing leaflets into letterboxes in front doors distinguished by no response from inside.
Eugene Magee, an old friend, was once canvassing for the late Seamus Brennan when he encountered one of those doors.
He reached into his back pocket for a particular leaflet, dreamed up by Brennan, which was personalised with a scrawled signature, telling the home-owner that Seamus was desolate not to have encountered them but was eager to serve, the implication being that it was he who had inserted the leaflet in the letterbox, even though the reality was that Seamus was miles away at the time.
In this particular instance, the letterbox was one of those low-down ones, sitting at ankle level in the front door.
Reacting too quickly to this, he trapped his hand in the letterbox and found himself betwixt and between, terrified that the homeowner would arrive behind him and find him delivering a note that wasn’t 100% truthful in its messaging.
It took him a minute to work out that he should let go of the umbrella and free his trapped letter-box hand.
It was one of those funny moments for which no equivalent exists after a campaign failure.
Nothing is funny when you lose. Self-deprecatory war stories are told only by the victors.
Having held a seat, or even more so, if you have held an Oireachtas role, the emotional shock of the post-election silence is enormous, as is the sense of betrayal caused by the absence of supporters who couldn’t get enough of you for the previous three weeks.
For some candidates — like, for example, Clare Daly — that’s complicated by her absence from Ireland for so many years, and complicated also by changing her constituency, both effectively isolating her, leaving her to lick her wounds on her own.
It’s worth pointing out the contrast presented by Pat The Cope Gallagher, who never “disappeared” into Europe, and who never changed his attitude to service when he lost his European Parliament seat when Fianna Fáil added Thomas Byrne to the ticket.
“The Cope never stopped being a local TD in Donegal,” an old colleague of his told me yesterday.
“He looked after all the local problems people had just as he’d always done.”
In consequence, a 76-year-old has made a spectacular return to the Oireachtas — and made a tongue-in-cheek pitch in one radio interview for a job that would keep him there until he is well into his eighties.
When asked if he’d want the Ceann Comhairle job, which carries with it the benefit of not having to run for your seat in the following election, The Cope managed to point out that he had a lot of relevant experience, having served as Leas Ceann Comhairle for several years.
Faithful service, down all the days, still has a political payoff. As does humour.