Is it all over for David Norris?

David Norris’s presidential campaign is dead in the water according to two separate opinion polls published in the past 24 hours.

Red C has him on 14%, fourth in the race.

Ipsos/MRBI puts him fifth, with just 11%.

For someone who held the lead in several polls during the summer, it’s a disaster.

And while Sean Gallagher has gained the momentum at a crucial time, Norris is going in the opposite direction.

The controversies over the clemency letters have dragged him down, and he needs a minor miracle to recover.

If you were in his campaign team, what move would you make right now to try to turn it around?

Here are a few ideas I had:

The only glimmer of hope in the polls for Norris is that when Red C asked the public, which of the candidates they would most like to invite over for dinner, he topped the poll (19pc). This shows that there remains a personal regard for Norris – many people still like him, despite all the controversies, they just can’t see him as president.  So the task for Norris is to get those people, who still like him, to believe again that he’d make a good president.

1 – High Profile Endorsements

He needs a series of high profile endorsements from people who are widely respected by the Irish public. People who could say, ‘I know David, I’ve seen what he’s done for Ireland, and I think he’s someone we could trust and be proud of as president’.  The name Mary Robinson comes to mind, given that she worked alongside him for years as they fought for the decriminalization of homosexuality. But obviously, as a former president, there is no way she can do it. But he needs people of that calibre. (Any ideas for who?) A series of endorsements could help change the narrative, because if someone like, say Colm O’Gorman, could come out and say they accept his regret over the letters, then maybe he can move past the issue.

2 – Play Up the Gay

I’ve argued before that rather than being a hindrance to him, the fact that he is gay is one of his strongest assets. He needs to raise the issue: “Is Ireland ready for a gay president?” If he can make that question a central part of the election, he will do better. Because I think the answer for a lot of the population is yes. Certainly, among those who could be persuaded to vote for him. A vote for him, is a vote for Ireland’s first gay president, a vote for something that would make history, a vote that would tell the world Ireland is out from under the yoke of Catholicism – that’s something that people could get behind. It’s also a subject that he’s on solid ground with, and that he can get passionate about.

3 – Anti-establishment credentials

He should be releasing collections of quotes and clips from speeches he has made in the Seanad over the years that show how often he was vocal in his opposition to policies that everyone now agrees were wrong. He voted against the bank guarantee, he opposed the war in Iraq – he needs to remind people that he has been on the right side of many of the big issues over the past two decades.

4 – Tone it down in media interviews

I know fans of the West Wing would argue that we need to just “let Norris be Norris” but his media appearances over the past week were awful. He needs to stop shouting, he needs to know when to pick his interjections and when to shut up. His attempts at playing the “everyman” are cringe-worthy. We all know he’s not a regular guy – he’s the colorful scholar of Joyce with a plummy accent and high intelligence. Less pomp, more realism.

5 – Courting transfers

We all know whoever wins such a crowded field is going to need to be strong on winning transfers from other candidates. Michael D and Sean Gallagher understood this when they facilitated Norris. Gallagher’s popular stunts on posters and letters are resonating, because they are common sense – even though they are nothing to do with presidency itself, but others should be jumping on board. I was surprised how small Norris’s transfers were from the likes of Mary Davis. It’s time for Norris to start looking for number 2s, especially from those candidates who are behind him, or very close to him in the polls. (He’d get a lot from Michael D and McGuinness, but he needs to get ahead of them before elimination so not much use)

None of these might be enough to stem the tide at this stage. The letters issue has been hugely damaging. His prepared legal statement at the official launch yesterday was his best attempt to deal with it, but really it was far too late having spent a week and a half faffing about on the issue. At this stage, when it comes to the letters, all he can say is that although people are interested in what’s in them, and the media are of course dying to find out what juice is in there, it’s not necessarily the same thing as the public interest. He has his legal advice, and either people believe that he’s following that or they believe he’s lying about it. He could challenge the other candidates to say whether or not they believe he’s lying about it. The letters are what they are – a plea for clemency for someone close to him after he’d been convicted, not an attempt to stop the conviction. I'm sure he regrets ever writing them now. But most people accept that, in his position, they too might have written for mercy for someone they loved. The problem is the defensiveness he's exuded in the past week. It looks like he's hiding something, a howler as Vincent Browne put it. Norris himself has never done anything to harm anyone, after all.  

But controversy is toxic to an Irish presidential race. Whether it's Mary Davis and the boards, or Norris and the letters, if enough of a fuss is created about them, then people will just go for the safe pair of hands, with none of the crap flying about. And who could blame them? We all know that even Norris is giving his number two to Michael D.