The general elections campaign is only in its early stages, even informally ahead of Friday’s official launch, but former broadcaster Alison Comyn, an early candidate for Fianna Fail hoping to become a TD at Louth, has experienced five ‘bad encounters’ during his prospecting.
“When a man screams in your face with veins in his neck and uses very strong expletives, your heart pounds in your chest,” she says of one such encounter.
“You just think I haven’t even had a chance to speak yet.”
The vast majority of her interactions with the voting public have been positive and the people are welcoming, Comyn says, but there were a few times that was definitely not the case.
“I had a guy run down the street, roll up one of my canvas cards, throw it in my face and say, ‘My door says no junk mail,’” she says.
Another time, one of her prospects was “mistreated” by a resident they knocked on. Comyn and the researcher left immediately. The incident was “quite mild but at the same time very scary because you don’t know where these things are going,” she said.
Comyn says she wouldn’t hesitate to report something serious, but she has reservations. “I don’t feel like having to call the guards – it wouldn’t be exactly how I would want my investigation to go – so just take it on the chin metaphorically, hopefully not physically.”
About the angry reaction of a small minority, she says: “You stick your head above the ground” to try to help.
“If someone doesn’t agree with the party, it honestly doesn’t take much to just say, ‘Not for me,’ and close the door properly.”
Fianna Fáil candidate Alison Comyn at Millmount Museum in Drogheda. Photo: Alan Betson
The issue of abuse faced by politicians has come to the fore again in recent days.
Green Party leader and Minister for Children and Integration Roderic O’Gorman was attacked last weekend while campaigning in his Dublin West constituency.
A 45-year-old man has pleaded guilty to assaulting O’Gorman and is due to appear in court.
O’Gorman has since said he is concerned about the safety of campaigners and politicians on the campaign trail. “One of the most important things” about the Irish political system is talking to people and asking for votes “one-on-one,” he says.
O’Gorman said the Garda would work with political parties and others “to ensure there is security so we can have a robust debate”.
Garda liaison officers were appointed to every division across the country ahead of the local and European elections in June and are still active “to help keep everyone participating in the upcoming elections safe”, the Garda said in a statement .
The Garda advised any candidate who is experiencing harassment or may be the victim of a crime to report it to them.
On Friday, the Garda and Coimisiún na Meán, the state media regulator, published advice for candidates on online safety, including how to respond to scenarios such as threats following a police investigation, ‘deepfake’ images and racist messages.
Fingal County Councilor Tania Doyle, an independent running in Dublin West, seeking information at Clonsilla train station in Dublin. Photo: Dara Mac Donaill
An updated version of a booklet on safety guidelines for candidates, produced by the Garda in collaboration with the organization Women for Election and See Her Elected, was published this week.
It advises candidates to avoid canvassing alone or in the dark where possible and not to leave people on the doorstep, among a range of precautions they should take.
One politician who won’t be conducting job interviews after dark is another candidate from Dublin West, Councilor Tania Doyle, an independent member of Fingal County Council.
She and her husband, Derek, had just finished putting up local election posters in the early hours of Wednesday morning last May when they were violently attacked by two men.
One of the men asked her opinion on immigration and started filming her. When her husband asked the man to put the phone down, an attack began that Doyle said at the time consisted of “punching and kicking and full force.”
She feared for both their lives and said they were able to flee when the other man finally tried to restrain the attacker. A Garda investigation into the incident is ongoing. It was one of the worst of a number of serious incidents across the country during local elections.
Doyle has decided not to go recruiting after dark and that is a “direct result” of her experience in May
Doyle continued her campaign, topped the poll and retained her council seat. Six months later, she hopes to be elected TD, although she admits she is uneasy about what happened.
“Of course I am,” she says. ‘I’d be lying to you if I said everything was 100 percent correct. I don’t feel 100 percent. But I have the strength within me to keep going and do what I think is right to do.
She is campaigning for a platform to improve services in the fast-growing Dublin 15 area in the west of the city. She says she can recruit confidently during the day and feels “completely safe in my environment”.
Her team travels in groups, ‘buddy up’ and leaves no one behind. But she has decided not to go recruiting after dark and that is a “direct result” of her experience in May.
“I just feel like when it’s dark, you just don’t know who’s going to open the door for you,” she says.
Sinn Féin housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin. Photo: Niall Carson/PA Wire
Dublin Mid West Sinn Fein T.D Eoin Ó Broin trains canvassers in his own constituency how to disengage from confrontations that could escalate.
“You thank them for their time and you get out of there as quickly as possible,” Ó Broin advises about such encounters.
He noted during the local elections that a small number of people wanted to have a “very loud, angry altercation”, while in the previous elections it might have been a “frosty reception, but you wouldn’t have had anything aggressive”.
While angry confrontations are rare, they can be frightening for inexperienced prospects, he says.
He himself had “two really problematic assignments” during the campaign leading up to the June elections.
One of these was when he was filmed waiting for a bus by a “far-right anti-migrant protester” who “yelled at me right in my face and I just had to keep my cool.”
The man called him a ‘rat’ and a ‘traitor’ and said Clondalkin would be gone from him.
“My answer to him, very polite and calm, was that the electorate can decide that,” says Ó Broin.
The other incident took place on an estate where a resident tore up a researcher’s pamphlet and threw it at him. When the investigator left, “the man walked behind us and was incredibly belligerent.”
“Again, if you were inexperienced, if you didn’t know how to handle that, that stuff would obviously be very intimidating,” he says.
Ó Broin has not had any similar experiences in this campaign so far.
He says the “real challenge” is that anyone watching such incidents will “have second thoughts about wanting to get involved in politics”.
“And especially if you’re a woman, especially if you’re a person of color, especially if you’re in the lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender community, there’s a real chilling factor to that.”
It’s not a new phenomenon, but “what has changed is that there is now a group of people who don’t want to meet with you on a certain topic,” he says. “They want a loud verbal confrontation with you and in many cases they want that for social media, for whatever purpose.”
“That can be very intimidating for people.”