Musician Frank McNamara to contest election for PDs

Seth Brundle

from here...

26/03/2007 - 11:33:14

The well-known composer and musician Frank McNamara is to contest this year's general election for the Progressive Democrats.

The former musical director of the Late Late Show is to seek a Dáil seat in the Dublin South-Central constituency alongside fellow PD Ben Doyle.

McNamara was the original producer of the Irish Tenors and arranged and produced two consecutive Irish winners of the Eurovision Song Contest.

However, this year's election will be his first foray into politics.

Frank McNamara lives near Dunshaughlin IIRC so why should he be allowed contest it in a different constituency? Surely candidates should live in the same constituency as those they expect to vote for them.
Is this commonplace in Irish politics?

The_Minister

There is no requirement to live in the area, but its generally thought a good idea to be nearby.
He's a bit late declaring though.

InFront

For goodness sake, "celebrity-you're-a-PD!"... the showbiz party.

I've never heard of this guy, and it is a bit strange if he doesn't live in the constituency. There's no PD seat there anyway, and there are already pretty strong candidates in place, why are they running 2 PDs?

DMC

InFront wrote:

I've never heard of this guy,

He was only the musical director on the Late Late Show for 15 years until 1999, at the same time Gay Byrne retired. He was on the show nearly every week. Very well known.

As far as I can remember he's married to former RTÉ presenter Theresa Lowe who is now a barrister.
They used live in Ballinteer by the way iirc.

brianthebard

He even has his own wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_mcnamara
Which has been updated to include the announcement of his running for election. Nice.

ballooba

Frank was asked on the radio yesterday when he was last in Ballyfermot. He couldn't remember. FFS, the guy can't even organise a musical, never mind a constituency.

This is desperation showing on the part of the PDs. Look how many votes his running mate Ben Doyle got in the Ballyfermot Local in 2004. He got 205 votes which represents 2.2% of the ballots. They can split that between them now and really live up to the "1% party" name.

mike65

You might think all politicans are local but in Dublin 60% are blow-ins. This suprised me when I heard it but there you go.

Mike.

Time Magazine

ballooba wrote:

This is desperation showing on the part of the PDs. Look how many votes his running mate Ben Doyle got in the Ballyfermot Local in 2004. He got 205 votes which represents 2.2% of the ballots. They can split that between them now and really live up to the "1% party" name.

You're being unfair there, splitting up that vote will give them 10% more votes than you claim .

ballooba

Ibid wrote:

You're being unfair there, splitting up that vote will give them 10% more votes than you claim .

I can just imagine the PDs out canvassing in Ballyer. It's just not cricket.

Seth Brundle

Ibid wrote:

ballooba wrote:

This is desperation showing on the part of the PDs. Look how many votes his running mate Ben Doyle got in the Ballyfermot Local in 2004. He got 205 votes which represents 2.2% of the ballots. They can split that between them now and really live up to the "1% party" name.

You're being unfair there, splitting up that vote will give them 10% more votes than you claim .

You are both forgetting the 2% margin of error