Elaine Loughlin: Results of Holly experiment due in the next few months
A year on since ‘Hollymania’ swept the country, the Cairns experiment is yet to have an outcome.
While Holly Cairns, the Social Democrats leader, has both enjoyed and endured significant media attention since taking over last March, her opponents can’t quite figure out her way of doing politics, which ignores some norms.
Ms Cairns will have to prove herself in the coming months: For the Social Democrats, the upcoming local elections are equivalent to the difficult second album.
While the party’s founding leaders, Catherine Murphy and Róisín Shortall, were managing a start-up of which little was expected, Ms Cairns must significantly scale up in the local elections to put her party on a solid footing going into a general election.
Ahead of the party’s conference this weekend, during which Ms Cairns will give her first televised speech as leader, one TD signalled how far the party had come.
“At least we know each other now: I can tell you, the first few conferences we really needed the name badges. Building a party from nothing is really not for the faint-hearted.”
Ms Cairns has done well in this regard, and said that “keeping up with our own growth” was more of a challenge than building the party.
However, a member of a rival party, describing Ms Cairns as a “political phenomena”, said that it is difficult to predict her personal future and the Social Democrats’ future.
Public support for the party more than doubled immediately after Ms Cairns was elected leader, but it has come back down and stabilised at 4%.
Her own ratings remain high: A recent Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks poll puts her on 41%, just below Tánaiste Micheál Martin, who has the highest approval rating, at 43%.
Taking up the reins of any party is daunting even for the most experienced of politicians.
“They said that it would be exhausting and exhilarating and exciting,” Ms Cairns told political correspondent Paul Hosford this week.
“It’s definitely been all of those things, and more. You know, at times it’s been overwhelming, but, for the most part, it’s been really, really fun and a huge privilege,” said Ms Cairns, who was among a generation that came to politics through the marriage equality and repeal campaigns.
As a first-time TD, Ms Cairns gained a name through her dogged campaigning on social and marginal issues. She was among the most vocal in the wake of the mother and baby home report controversies and strongly advocated on behalf of pregnant women and their partners during the pandemic.
The time that she has had to put into this work has naturally decreased because she has also had to direct the broader vision of the party.
As an example of Ms Cairns’s inexperience, detractors point to the fact that she often rigidly reads from her notes during leaders’ questions in the Dáil.
And as a rural politician representing one of the most isolated constituencies in the country, the Cork South West TD doesn’t put the same emphasis on the parish pump as would be expected. Instead, she focuses on international issues, such as the conflict in Gaza.
Over the summer, Ms Cairns took the unorthodox decision to close her Bandon constituency office, which raised some eyebrows, despite the fact she said that she had been forced to do so for security reasons.
She had previously spoken publicly about the abuse directed at her and how she was left “absolutely terrified” after an online stalker began to appear at her West Cork home.
Of course, Ms Cairns will stress that she is still very active ‘on the ground’ and that she has embraced social media to keep constituents updated.
When contacted this week, her party colleagues were quick to row in behind her.
“Many claimed she wouldn’t be elected in 2020. She has a bigger profile now than she had the last time and I wouldn’t underestimate that,” said one TD.
“It’s not something that we are worried about.”
She had to fight to gain a place on the council in 2019, winning by just one vote after a lengthy recount.
One Social Democrats member acknowledged that Fine Gael, which in the last general election failed to take a seat in what should be a stronghold for the party, will be “throwing the kitchen sink at it this time”.
Ms Cairns is not the only sitting Social Democrats TD who is under pressure.
Gary Gannon will be contesting the same constituency as Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, who will be expected to return a running mate.
Green Party TD Neasa Hourigan will also be at risk and the Social Democrats are hoping Mr Gannon will be the one to win and secure the final seat.
The party’s housing spokesman Cian O’Callaghan will be helped by the fact that long-serving TD Richard Bruton has announced that he will not be standing.
Equally, the selection of Labour Party TD Aodhán Ó Ríordáin as a candidate for Europe means that there is a possibility of two vacant seats going into the general election, which gives the remaining sitting TDs an advantage.
Jennifer Whitmore will be standing in a newly configured constituency in Wicklow, alongside two ministers, Simon Harris, higher education, and Stephen Donnelly, health.
Before that, the Social Democrats will have to put in a good day in the local elections.
The party secured 21 local council seats in 2019, but will be hoping to double that in June and will be fielding somewhere between 80 and 100 candidates.
Ms Cairns knows that she needs this amount of representation at local level if the Social Democrats are to come back as a real force in the next Dáil.
One Social Democrats member said: “We have suffered by virtue of the fact that we have not been a party for very long.”
Another TD said that she often gets told: “It’s a pity you are not bigger.”
Ms Cairns is hoping that voters, eager for something different, will be drawn to her new style of politics.
“What we’re asking people to do is to give us a chance,” she said this week.
The results of the Holly experiment will only be seen after June’s election.