Higgins and McGuinness carve up constituency

Higgins and McGuinness have carved up constituency as canvass continues

Áine Ryan

COULD Deputy Luke Ming Flanagan’s last-minute decision to become the eleventh candidate to put his name on the ticket for the European Elections change the outcome in this sprawling new constituency of the Midlands-North West?
Well, Mayo Fine Gael MEP Jim Higgins says he isn’t concerned about his candidature while, in a more colourful response,  Labour Party Senator Lorraine Higgins remarked in The Irish Independent over the weekend: “Why waste your vote on a stoner who would have no influence, has delivered nothing as a TD, and is effectively a soapbox?”
Of course, with all the sincerity of a politician, she wished him well in the next breath.
Back closer to home, the fact that Jim Higgins confirmed yesterday to The Mayo News that himself and his party colleague, Mairéad McGuinnes – already tipped to top the poll –  have carved up this vast, 15-county constituency, to their mutual satisfaction means that any rumblings of guerilla warfare are no more than media speculation.
“We have agreed [a canvassing strategy] that I would have Galway, Mayo and Roscommon and she will have Louth and Meath and we have signed-off on that. This strategy will be reviewed every ten days to assess how that is going,” Jim Higgins said.   
Jim Higgins conceded to The Mayo News in January he expects Fianna FΡil’s Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher to take the second seat and that he will be in a dog-fight with sitting Independent Marian Harkin and Sinn Féin’s Matt Carthy for the last two seats.
The former Mayo county councillor and Mayo TD said at the time: “I have stood in 14 elections and, thankfully, have won the majority of them and if Fine Gael manages this well both Mairéad McGuinness and myself will be returned.”
Speaking yesterday, he said that there was also 11 candidates in the last election. This was before this constituency was significantly extended, to become the biggest geographically in the European Union, with a population of 1.5 million.
“I don’t think Ming Flanagan will have an impact on my vote. If I get the solid Fine Gael support in Mayo, I will have made a good start. I have already been elected here many times over a 26-year period,” Mr Higgins said.
He revealed that he had been canvassing in Galway towns over the weekend and that ‘not one person had refused to take canvassing literature’.
“We distributed over 6,000 leaflets and we were pleasantly surprised that nobody complained about austerity given the national media antagonism towards the government,” he said. 

‘Star performer’
WHILE commentators from across the board have favoured McGuinness as winning a definite Fine Gael seat, some seasoned political correspondents are more circumspect.
The Irish Times’s Parliamentary Correspondent, Michael O’Regan wrote recently: “Ms McGuinness starts as the frontrunner but Mr Higgins, a star performer during his years in the DΡil and possible party leader at one time, cannot be underestimated.”
Indeed, he added: “On a good day for Fine Gael, the intense rivalry between the two candidates could produce two seats.”