Ring a vote-getting machine in Mayo for 45 years

WHENEVER An Taoiseach Simon Harris decides it is time to take a spin to the Áras and call the next general election, it will mark the first time since 1979 where the name of Michael Ring will not appear on a ballot paper in Mayo.

The man from Fr Angelus Park in Westport has been a mainstay in Mayo politics since 1979 when he was first elected to Westport Urban District Council which resulted in a 45-year career in politics.

In those 45 years, he has contested six general elections, one by-election, four Westport Urban District Council Election and two county council elections and bar the 1992 General Election, he has been elected at every one.

His first venture into politics was in 1979 when he was elected as the youngest member of Westport Urban District Council. Three years later he was elected as Chairman of the UDC.

He was reelected in 1985, when he shocked many people by he topping the poll with 352 votes, which at the time was believed to be the highest first preference vote ever recorded in the council’s history.

Ring was by this time a vote-winning machine. His skills in attracting votes from people of all political shades were replicated in 1991 when he ran for the first time in the Mayo County Council elections. He topped the poll with 2,063 votes, which took him over 400 votes over the quota to get elected to Áras an Chontae.

The one blot on his electoral record came in the 1992 General Election when he was selected to run alongside Enda Kenny on the Fine Gael ticket in the West Mayo constituency. He was in third place after the first count with 5,136 votes but was overtaken on transfers and finished fourth behind Fianna Fáil’s Seamus Hughes, who took the third and final seat behind Padraig Flynn and Kenny.

Michael Ring celebrating another election victory

Finest hour

Ring’s finest hour came two years later when he tore up the political script to defeat Beverly Cooper-Flynn in the West Mayo by-election in June 1994.

At the time, Fine Gael had been languishing in the public opinion polls and many had predicted that Cooper-Flynn would romp home to victory and take the seat vacated by her father, Padraig Flynn, who had become Ireland’s EU Commissioner.

Ring had been picked as Fine Gael’s candidate for over a year before the by-election took place and had spent every day preparing for the contest.

After the first count, Cooper-Flynn had the edge on Ring and was leading by 577 votes. With two Castlebar-based candidates in Independent Paddy McGuinness and Labour’s Johnny Mee in the field many predicted the transfers would go back to the county town.

However, proving that Ring had the popular touch, the distribution of the eliminated candidate’s votes went largely to Ring, who leapfrogged Cooper-Flynn to take the Dáil seat.

“Since I started my campaign I’ve been canvassing this constituency for the past 15 months and I have been in public life for 15 years. I believe it is my work that has persuaded the people of West Mayo to vote for me,” Ring said after his election.

On the day he was elected to the Dáíl, Ring was also reelected to Westport UDC after topping the poll.

With West and East Mayo merging into one countywide constituency for the 1997 General Election, Ring once again proved he was not just popular in the west of the county. He polled over 10,000 first preference votes to romp home to victory to once again show his doubters that he was the most popular politician in the county.

‘Personality vote’

Despite his feet firmly in Dáil Éireann, Ring continued to serve as both a county councillor and a member of Westport UDC but decided not to contest the UDC election in 1999. He did, however, contest the county council election and predictably topped the poll in the Westport Electoral Area.

However, despite having a surplus of 1,178 he failed to help get his running mate Peter McManamon elected and was accused of not being a team player – a suggestion he rejected.

“At the end of the day, I cannot stop people voting for me. I have attracted a personality vote and I am very grateful for that. There are people who vote for Michael Ring who would never otherwise vote for Fine Gael. I cannot be blamed for that,” he said after the election.

This would be the last time Ring would run in a local election with the abolition of the dual mandate preventing Oireachtas members from being members of the local authority. Ring took an unsuccessful high-profile legal challenge to the end of the dual mandate despite Fine Gael officially backing it.

The 2002 General Election was a disaster for Fine Gael nationally, but Ring again bucked the trend by topping the poll with 15.6 percent of the vote.

With Enda Kenny now the leader of Fine Gael and running for Taoiseach, Ring had to take a backseat to his party leader, who topped the poll in the 2007, 2011 and 2016 General Elections. Ring was elected comfortably in all three elections and exceeded the quota on the first count in 2011.

Twenty-six years after he was first elected to the Dáil and in what proved to be his last election, Ring again proved that he had not lost the ability to attract votes when he topped the poll in the 2020 General Election with 14,796 votes.

For over four decades, Ring has been able to remain a vote-winning phenomenon, and the impact of the loss of this colossus on Fine Gael’s Mayo vote will surely be fascinating.