EDITORIAL: Sinn Féin bets on Murray in Mayo with two-candidate strategy

WE should at last have a date for the upcoming General Election by Friday, with Simon Harris announcing yesterday (Tuesday) that he will call for the dissolution of the Dáil this week. It looks as though it will be a short three-week run-in, with the election to be held on the expected date of Friday, November 29.
The field here in Mayo swelled out to 14 candidates last week with the news that Sinn Féin is now set to adopt a two-candidates strategy by including experienced councillor Gerry Murray to run alongside sitting TD, Rose Conway-Walsh.
Deputy Conway-Walsh has previously stated that she preferred a two-candidate strategy, but the decision would have to be made by the party headquarters, and on Saturday they confirmed that Cllr Murray would be throwing his hat into the ring.
In the 2020 election, Sinn Féin performed remarkably well, taking a whopping 22.7 percent of the first preference vote, with Conway-Walsh getting 14,633 number ones.
That was just 163 votes behind the poll-topping Michael Ring – and with the veteran Fine Gael TD having announced his retirement, there is a whole new political landscape to contend with in Mayo.

Honoured
Sinn Féin obviously feel there is an opportunity to take a second seat, and Murray said at the weekend that he was honoured to be on the ticket.
“To be selected by Sinn Féin to run in a general election in this constituency really is an honour. I want to build on the incredible work already done by our sitting TD Rose Conway-Walsh. I think if we can double Sinn Féin’s Mayo representatives in Leinster House, that can only be a good thing for people across our county.
“I think most people have had enough of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil wasting taxpayers’ money on bike sheds, security huts, phone pouches and overspends on hospitals and modular homes, whilst hardworking people here in Mayo struggle to make ends meet.
“It is not fair, and I think that is something that needs to change as soon as possible. In Sinn Féin we are here to provide that change and offer a real alternative to this failed government.”
Fine Gael took nearly 40 percent of the Mayo first preference vote back in 2020, but without Ring among their ranks, it remains to be seen whether the party’s four-candidate strategy will yield such a big return.
Alan Dillon will expected to seriously increase his first preference vote this time round, having only attracted 5,198 first preference votes in 2020, which was actually more than 1,100 votes behind the other Castlebar-based candidate, Lisa Chambers of Fianna Fáil.
Martina Jennings, who works in the county town with the Mayo Roscommon Hospice, could also do well in Castlebar, but she will be hoping to get herself into the race by dominating the south Mayo boxes.
Cllr Mark Duffy too will be hoping to increase the Fine Gael vote in Ballina, where Michelle Mulherin took 5,435 votes last time out, and if Keira Keogh took even half of the Michael Ring votes, she could be in the mix for a seat.

Intriguing
So it really will be intriguing when the tallies begin in Castlebar on the day the votes are set to be counted, which looks likely to be on Saturday, November 30.
Only then will we know who is really in the race for a seat, and the subsequent order of eliminations will perhaps decide who will take the fives seat that are now on offer.
As we saw last week, Independent candidates Patsy O’Brien and Chris Maxwell are proactively promoting each other for preference votes, and Fine Gael will be hoping that whichever of their candidates is eliminated first will transfer strongly to their other candidates.
Fianna Fáil have targeted getting both their candidates elected, but they won’t have the luxury of an early elimination and they undoubtedly will have to increase their first-preference total of 24.1 percent from 2020.
So it really is all to play for here in Mayo, and once the election is called, it will be interesting to see how the bookmakers react when pricing up the odds of the Mayo constituency. With such a short run into voting day, candidates will really have to hit the ground running in the coming weeks in their attempts to convince the Mayo electorate that they should be the ones to represent our county in the 34th Dáil.