Last Thursday saw the culmination of two weeks of intense SU election campaigning. When Returning Officer Ashley Cooke announced the results it was revealed that Ryan Bartlett had beaten back the RON scare to become TCDSU President-elect and Chris O’Connor had come from being the rank outsider in the Ents race to squeaking past Elaine McDaid to be elected Ents Officer by 141 votes.
The Mont Clare Hotel, just off Merrion Square, was the venue for the count and from 8pm speculation was leaking down from the count room as the ballots were sorted and first impressions were gleaned by University Times Editor, Tom Lowe, and quickly tweeted to the UT Twitter account. Lowe was promptly asked to eave the count room, leaving him leaning in through the doorway, furiously typing any scraps of information that came his way. There was some early drama in the night as Seb Lecocq’s campaign manager and then John Cooney campaigner Danny O’Keefe took an unfortunate spill down the stairs of the hotel to the detriment of his chin, having to be carted off in an ambulance.
By 10pm the bar was packed with anxious hopefuls and their weary but unendingly enthusiastic campaign teams. But before the SU results could be tallied, the student centre referendum and Provostial votes had to be counted. The student centre has been promised for ten years now, it being a central plank of current Provost John Hegarty’s manifesto. The passing of this referendum would have cleared the final funding hurdle and construction would have begun in earnest. Trinity students were asked if they would be willing to pay a levy of €69 with an additional €2 being added every year for twenty years. The financially strapped student body rejected this proposal by 2399 votes to 2066, setting back ten years of work and leaving the project with no clear way forward. The dismay on the faces of Sabbats present was obvious, with Ents Officer Darragh Genockey particularly annoyed at the result, as it meant that the promised gigs venue with capacity for 700 may not see a guitar licked nor a banjo picked.
A victorious Ronan Costello
After this initial surprise, the gathered audience returned to their drinks as the Provostial votes were counted. Patrick Prendergast entered this race as the clear favourite but Colm Kearney’s savvy electioneering and student-centric promises had given the business Professor the momentum heading into the final days. This was borne out in the result, with Kearney beating Prendergast by 1721 to 1599 on the third count. Thus, the six SU votes in the Provostial election will be cast for Kearney.
With Kearney victorious, Cooke announced that the Communications ballots would be counted next, provoking giddy chatter in the bar. The candidates made their way up to the count room, with Eleni Megoran accompanied by UT columnist and blogger Declan Harmon while Ronan Costello was joined by his nail-biting campaign co-manager Darragh Haugh. The Communications race had been one of the more genial contests, with no bad blood between the candidates. It was with good grace then that the candidates accepted the result, Costello claiming victory by 2738 to Megoran’s 1353. Daniela Matuschka, a first year Trinity Halls resident, observed that “Costello’s ginger hair motif was the perfect combination of eye-catching attention grabber and zeitgeisty Hardy Bucks style banter-indicator. There was no chance he could lose.”
The Education candidates didn’t have to wait long before Cooke descended the stairs again. The result proved what the UT polls had predicted since early on in the race, with Rachel Barry claiming a solid victory over John Cooney. Barry won 2494 first preferences to Cooney’s 1720. The contest had been bitterly fought at times, the insults summed up by Ian Curran when he wrote that he had enjoyed them calling each other “drunken paedophiles”, but both candidates were humble when the result was announced, with any grudges that had existed being forgotten.
At this point in the night the atmosphere became feverish, the hotel staff becoming ever more belligerent in an effort to kick all non-essential hangers-on out of the building. The doors were locked and anyone who left was not allowed back in. Predictably, the gathered crowd ignored all of this and continued to wait for the next result: Welfare.
At the start of the Welfare race it had been anticipated that it would come down to a tight run-off between Louisa Miller and LGBT Auditor Darren O’Gorman. In the end though Miller ran away with it, receiving more first preferences than the rest of her competitors combined. Miller’s 2196 first preferences were enough to see her clear the quota by eleven votes on the first count. O’Gorman received 1065 while Russell Bryce and Caroline Keating received 569 and 438 respectively. Miller had run an extremely well organised campaign and many had judged her election materials to be the best designed of the election.
The wait between Education and Welfare had been long and seemingly unnecessary, but this was nothing compared to the wait before the results for the Ents race were announced. The most hotly contested race of the night, and easily the most bitter rivalry of the election, the candidates were called up to the count room and didn’t emerge for the best part of an hour. The tension downstairs increased as the hotel staff continued to clean up around the supporters and bleat about everyone clearing out. Not only did the supporters not clear out but the CO’C faithful began to arrive through the windows in droves, maintaining their laddish image.
Elaine McDaid’s parents waited with those of her boyfriend, Ents Officer Darragh Genockey as the ballots were counted. McDaid had been nervous about them meeting for the first time, but any thoughts of awkward icebreakers or familial divisions over Eircom League teams were all but forgotten as both families sat together and stared at the door through which Cooke would enter with the result. As Cooke arrived down to deliver the result, texts were already being sent from the count room from O’Connor’s team, greeted with expressions of euphoric disbelief by their recipients. The Swinford native had done it. When Cooke made the official announcement the CO’C supporters who had gathered together, arm in arm, erupted in roars of delight and victory chants. “We will CO’C you” was sung to O’Connor as he entered the room, mobbed by the campaign team that had propelled him from relative obscurity to being the figurehead for a fresh and creative approach to Ents campaigns, one which took advantage of the emergence of video and played on an implied acceptance that the Ents Officer should be a Van Wilder-type character.
Rachel Barry, also victorious
McDaid, who had run an accomplished and professional campaign based on experience and the promise of collaboration between the Ents office and the student body, was stoic in defeat while all around her succumbed to despair. There were tears in the street, in the bar and in the corridors. Her family sat ashen-faced as her supporters comforted each other. It was a journey neither they nor their daughter will soon forget. The final tally, after RONs were transferred, was 2207 to O’Connor and 2066 to McDaid.
This result created a strange atmosphere for the Presidential count. While some speculated that Bartlett might actually be “RON’d”, this was never a realistic prediction. It has never happened to an uncontested candidate before and probably never will. Bartlett received 3028 first preferences to RON’s 1330. While this was the largest ever showing for RON, it still left Bartlett with a very comfortable margin. The large RON turnout was inevitable, with Heffernan having stirred genuine affection and enthusiasm from those who followed his campaign.
The count over, and hotel staff reaching their wits end, the winners and losers trickled out of the hotel. The Button Factory was the designated after-party destination.
Some made it there, others didn’t.
Ronan Costello
