The general election campaign has, even informally prior to Friday’s official start, only been in its early stages but former broadcaster Alison Comyn, a first-time candidate for Fianna Fáil hoping to become a TD in Louth, has experienced five “bad encounters” while out canvassing.
“When a man is screaming in your face with veins popping on his neck and using very strong expletives, your heart is thumping in your chest,” she says of one of those encounters.
“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 people are welcoming, says Comyn, but on a handful of occasions that has certainly not been the case.
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“I had a man run down the street, roll up one of my canvass cards and throw it in my face and saying: ‘My door says no junk mail,’” she says.
Another time one of her canvassers was “manhandled” by a resident whose door they knocked on. Comyn and the canvasser left immediately. The incident was “quite mild but at the same time very frightening because you don’t know where these things are going to go”, she says.
Comyn says she would not hesitate to report something serious but she has reservations. “I don’t want to have to call the guards – it would be not exactly how I’d like my canvass to go – so you just metaphorically take it on the chin, hopefully not physically.”
Of the angry reaction of a small minority, she says: “You’re putting your head above the parapet” to try to help.
“If somebody doesn’t agree with the party, honestly it doesn’t take much to just say: ‘Not for me’, and close the door nicely.”
The issue of the abuse politicians face has come to the fore again in recent days.
Green Party leader and Minister for Children and Integration Roderic O’Gorman was assaulted while canvassing in his Dublin West constituency last weekend.
A 45-year-old man has pleaded guilty to assaulting O’Gorman and is before the courts.
O’Gorman has since said he is worried about the safety of canvassers 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 says the Garda would be working with political parties and others “to ensure there is safety so that we can have a vigorous debate”.
Garda liaison inspectors were appointed in each division nationwide since before the local and European elections in June and these are still in place “to help keep all those participating in the forthcoming elections safe”, the Garda said in a statement.
The Garda advised any candidate who experiences harassment or may be the victim of any crime to report it to them.
On Friday the Garda and Coimisiún na Meán, the State’s media regulator, published advice for candidates on online safety, including how to react to scenarios such as threats after a canvass, “deepfake” images and racist messages.
An updated version of a booklet on safety guidance for candidates produced by the Garda in conjunction with the Women for Election and See Her Elected organisation was published this week.
It advises candidates to avoid, where possible, canvassing alone or in the dark and not to leave people behind on doors among a series of precautions they should take.
One politician who will not be canvassing after dark is another Dublin West candidate, councillor Tania Doyle, an Independent on Fingal County Council.
She and her husband, Derek, were 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 demanded her views on immigration and started to video her. When her husband asked the man to put the phone away, an attack began that Doyle said at the time included “punches and kicks and complete violence”.
She feared for both of their lives and said it was when the other man eventually tried to restrain the attacker, they were able to flee. A Garda investigation into the incident is ongoing. It was one of the worst of a number of serious incidents around the country during the local election.
Doyle has decided not to canvass when it gets dark and that is a ‘direct result’ of her experience in May
Doyle persevered with her campaign, going on to top the poll and retaining her council seat. Six months later she is hoping to be elected as a TD, though she acknowledges she is apprehensive given what happened.
“Of course I am,” she says. “I’d be telling you a lie if I said everything is 100 per cent. I don’t feel 100 per cent. But I have that strength in me to keep going and do what I feel is right to do.”
Campaigning on a platform of improving services in the rapidly growing Dublin 15 area in the west of the city, she says she is confident canvassing during the day and feels “completely safe in my area”.
Her team travels in groups, “buddy up” and do not leave anyone behind. But she has decided not to canvass when it gets dark and that is a “direct result” of her experience in May.
“I just feel when it’s dark you just don’t know who’s going to open that door to you,” she says.
Dublin Mid-West Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin trains canvassers in his own constituency on how to disengage from confrontations with the potential to escalate.
“You thank them for their time and you get out of there as quickly as possible,” Ó Broin advises of such encounters.
He noticed during the local election that a small number of people wanted to have a “very loud, angry exchange” whereas in previous elections it might have been a “frosty reception but you wouldn’t have got anything aggressive”.
Though angry confrontations are rare, they can be frightening for inexperienced canvassers, he says.
He himself had “two really problematic engagements” during the campaign leading up to the June elections.
One was when he was videoed while waiting for a bus by a “far right anti-migrant protester” who was “right in my face screaming at me and I just had to hold my composure”.
The man called him a “rat” and a “traitor” and said he was going to be run out of Clondalkin.
“My response to him, very politely and calmly, was the electorate will get to decide that,” says Ó Broin.
The other incident was in an estate where a resident tore up a canvasser’s leaflet and threw it at him. As the canvasser left, the man “proceeded to walk out after us and was incredibly belligerent”.
“Again if you were inexperienced, if you didn’t know how to handle that, that stuff would be clearly very intimidating,” he says.
Ó Broin has not had similar experiences so far in this campaign.
He says the “real challenge” is that anybody looking at such incidents “will have second thoughts about wanting to get involved in politics”.
“And particularly if you’re a woman, particularly if you are a person of colour, particularly if you’re a from the lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans community, that stuff has a real chilling factor.”
It is not a new phenomenon but “what has changed is there’s now a group of people and they don’t want to have an engagement with you about an issue,” he says. “They want a loud verbal confrontation with you and in many instances they want that for social media for whatever purpose.”
“That can be very intimidating for folks.”
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