Is the Norris campaign a textbook example of how not to do things?

donothoponpop

During the latest Presidential debate today, David Norris poured scorn on the row of pumpkins, which had been carved with portraits of each candidate, sitting in front of the debaters. "I wonder does that suggest that this debate is really serious about the issues which all us candidates feel are important. I don't think that we should permit this trivialization. I'm really sorry, but I think it is wrong, it is an insult to the audience and an insult to the people listening", he said.

Putting a row of caricature pumpkins in front row of a presidential debate is demeaning- hard to disagree with anything there. Except the idea for placing the pumpkins there had come from Norris's own campaign team, which Charlie Bird pointed out at the end of the debate. Norris may have a serious side to him, but he will be remembered for running the worst campaign in political history. As this stunt shows, he surrounded himself with an inexperienced team of sycophants, his campaign team (in his own words) causing trivialization and insult to what should be a serious debate. Given that he was riding high in opinion polls a few short months back, and those same polls were used as leverage for several politicos to support his entry into the race, shouldn't he be treating his own campaign with a bit more control and gravitas?

oppenheimer1

The greatest problem with his campaign has been his team. He has chosen to surround himself with yes men. I'm guessing these sycophants were the only ones to stick around after his first team walked away. In a sense his campaign has been badly hit by amateurishness and dire public performances. The public began to realise that they hadn't been properly exposed to Norris before, and what they were seeing was a loud, massive ego, with so many skeletons in the closet that they go all the way back to Narnia. They didn't like what they wee seeing, and the lack of a proper campaign team wasn't able to change the narrative of the public discourse.


He shouldn't have re-entered but I'm glad he did, because it would negatively affect the eventual winners legitimacy if he wasn't on the ballot.

The lessons any candidate in any election can learn form this is that you must have a devils advocate in your team. Without someone like this to prepare you for the public and the media, you will crumble at anything close to a difficult question. The reasons collapse of Norris support would make for an interesting study.

mikemac

He's never fought a big public election in his life. Yes, I know about his crusades and achievements but I'm posting on elections

Sure he sweeps up the votes for his senate seat but it's not like he gets a grilling and big exposure for this
If he ever ran for Dublin Central for the Dáil we'd know a lot of these skeletons already.
But instead they all came at once

He was unprepared for this campaign and it was a real amateur effort.
When the HLB tapes were in the news, he went Pat Kenny show and acknowledged this was a going to a tough, dirty election but he didn't learn at all from that issue.
It would have been a lot smarter to get straight onto RTÉ radio and sort out the story on the day but instead he waited and stewed and it blew up.

He may be a politician but he's not a hardened or experienced one and his team left him.
Never dealt with cut throat selection committees, back stabbing running mates and bitter constituency battles. It's all very comfortable picking up that TCD seat and staying in the lofty halls of the Seanad.

With a smart campaign team and the right advice a lot of these issues could have been avoided.

WalterMitty

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/norriss-disability-pay-three-times-more-than-he-admitted-2913914.html

MadsL

^^^

Not this nonsense again...

ffs.

Nodin

In fairness it should be pointed out that advisors can only do so much. If a candidate ignores all advice.....I think accusations of "yes men" may therefore be a bit harsh.

Eliot Rosewater

His performances in the debates were appalling. His consistent accusations of being maltreated and not being given equal time were highly obnoxious. If all seven candidates had acted in the boisterous manner he did the debates would merely have been hour long shouting and moaning matches. His "one minute speech" to the nation at the end of the Prime Time debate was horrendous. You've one minute to sell your campaign and you spend it talking about statuary rape law. Really?

I think oppenheimer1 makes a very good point: we hadn't seen the "real" David Norris before this election. I saw him give an excellent and impressive speech in UCC last year. However that format failed to display his egotistical side because it was, by definition, all about him. I think what happened in the TV debates is that Norris couldn't handle not being given all of the attention all of the time. This is why he insisted on making accusation and interrupting other candidates.

Two months ago I saw myself giving Norris no. 1, however now he is firmly consigned to the unelectable Dana category.

Norris has had every opportunity to turn his campaign about but each time he seems to go out of his way to dig the hole a little deeper. He has consistently been the worst performer in the debates, his evasive answers, self serving egotistical speeches, inability to answer any question he is asked and his "woe is me" repeated statements of how hard life has been on him.

The best thing he could do is withdraw from the race but I assume that his pompous nature wouldn't allow that.

foggy_lad

Nodin wrote: »

In fairness it should be pointed out that advisors can only do so much. If a candidate ignores all advice.....I think accusations of "yes men" may therefore be a bit harsh.

There was a report in one of the papers recently where some of his team were saying that norris would go off on wild rambling speeches when asked even the simplist of questions by them while preparing him for press attention etc and they would try to stop him speaking but one would have to shout over him telling him to shut the f**k up.

if he wont hear his own advisors then he is hardly likely to listen to the people if elected!

RandomName2

1. Allowing a drip-drip of information about three items: that interview, that letter, and that pension.
2. Repeatedly claiming his life was an open book whilst attempting to stem information relating to the above (thereby helping the drip-drip dissemination).
3. Pulling out of the race before reentering.
4. An over-focus on his campaign for gay-rights and his Trinity career.
5. Not attempting to shore up the more middle-of-the-road voters that would shy away from a overly liberal agenda.
6. It's the economy, stupid.

jimmycrackcorm

He had such potential to make a comeback, only to completely fudge it by not being straight and open about the letters. Even if the letters had just reiterated the same stuff already said about him, people would have just said meh and moved on. Trying to hide these has been his real downfall.

anymore

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

He had such potential to make a comeback, only to completely fudge it by not being straight and open about the letters. Even if the letters had just reiterated the same stuff already said about him, people would have just said meh and moved on. Trying to hide these has been his real downfall.

In fairness he is consistent - he also had the opportunity to appear on the Liveline show and confront Helen Lucy Burke but he also funked that.
Wonder why ?

hotmail.com

There was a huge bulk of people that were never going to vote Norris even before the scandals emerged. His accent, his sexual orientation, the fact that he was a Trinity senator and for some, his religion meant that he was going to face an uphill struggle from the start. No matter what Norris said or did or promised, a section of the population just wouldn't vote for a gay, posh, privileged, Protestant to be the next president.

Nevertheless, the polls demonstrated that the a significant amount of the population wanted him as the next president. These were probably younger and urban people and not socially conservative. This amounted to about 25 to 30% of the population and Norris was in with a shout of winning.

Then the clemency letters story emerged and it was curtains. That support whithered away. He failed to address the matter appropriately, but how could he? How can one defend the indefensible. Nothing else mattered in his campaign.

So there is no other factor in his demise, the letters and that's it. Those that were open to voting for Norris changed their minds.

Tigerandahalf

hotmail.com wrote: »

THis accent, his sexual orientation, the fact that he was a Trinity senator and for some, his religion meant that he was going to face an uphill struggle from the start. No matter what Norris said or did or promised, a section of the population just wouldn't vote for a gay, posh, privileged, Protestant to be the next president.

Very true. I think he got a bit carried away with what he thought was substantial support. He's not a real politician, never fought an election in his life. He has no idea of the issues on the ground. He has worked in TCD and the Seanad, hardly places that would be in touch with daily life on the ground. I didn't see much of his debates but once I heard about the pension, he was dead in the water for me. His campaign team were probably not the hard-core crowd either. They'll be pushing some other candidate next week.

Zubeneschamali

I was watching Stephen Fry on BBC last night, and in a bit about Joyce, there he was in Dublin, talking to...

David Norris. A non-shouty David Norris, who came across as warm and knowledgeable, funny and charming.

That was the David Norris that 30% of those polled supported early on. But that David Norris didn't show up for the campaign.

Edit: I'll still be giving him my #1, mind you.

RichardAnd

Norris' campaign team don't seem to be world class by any stretch of the imagination but let's be realistic; anyone that could get someone as controversial as Norris elected would be a genius of political canvasing. At the end of the day, people will make their decisions based upon the man himself and when that man has a history like a checkered flag and comes across as a lunatic to many people, it shouldn't come as a surprise that support bombed when he really came into the public eye.

Snakeblood

hotmail.com wrote: »

There was a huge bulk of people that were never going to vote Norris even before the scandals emerged. His accent, his sexual orientation, the fact that he was a Trinity senator and for some, his religion meant that he was going to face an uphill struggle from the start. No matter what Norris said or did or promised, a section of the population just wouldn't vote for a gay, posh, privileged, Protestant to be the next president.

Nevertheless, the polls demonstrated that the a significant amount of the population wanted him as the next president. These were probably younger and urban people and not socially conservative. This amounted to about 25 to 30% of the population and Norris was in with a shout of winning.

Then the clemency letters story emerged and it was curtains. That support whithered away. He failed to address the matter appropriately, but how could he? How can one defend the indefensible. Nothing else mattered in his campaign.

So there is no other factor in his demise, the letters and that's it. Those that were open to voting for Norris changed their minds.

I was going to vote for Norris initially because I felt he'd be an ok figurehead for the country as a socially liberal scholar. Then the pederasty thing came out and I thought 'Well maybe he was taken out of context' because it was obvious Helen Lucy Burke disliked him intensely. Then the clemency letters came out and I just didn't like that at all.

Whatever about intellectually defending the 'classic' notion of greek paedophilia (which I took to be an intellectual exercise rather than expressing a preference for that state of affairs), I don't really approve of people who defend grown adults banging kids.

After that he was pretty obviously sunk for everyone else and definitely for me. The pension didn't matter a lick, to be honest.

the kelt

There are a couple of things about Norris.

First off there is a core group there telling Norris how great he is, they are all over the net and Norris could do anything, murder you name it and these followers will tell everyone they are still going to vote for Norris and denounce everyone else as scare mongering!!!

Secondly Norris got suckered by the Press. When he left, for his own good and the good of his legacy he should have left it alone. Yet he was of the opinion that the prople wanted him back in the race when in relaity it was press propoganda that wanted him back in the race simply because they knew the skeletons that were there and needed to sell papers.

David couldnt see this of course or his ego wouldnt let him and the rest is history along with Norris's campaign, in relaity he has no one but himself to blame.

[Jackass]

The greatest problem with Norris' campaign has been the candidate.

Not only did his ideas and opinions not go down well once he was given the oppertunity to express them, but he's also seen as a potential embarressment to the country based on his previous behaviour and outspoken opinions.

I've no problem with outspoken politicians, in fact I embrace it, and think he'd be a great TD, but I don't want my president speaking out about the catholic church on a monday, and then going to meet the media in Rome on a trade mission on the Tuesday.

Essentially, it's about what role you want to the president to take on, and personally, I don't want what Norris proposes, despite liking him, and would put him in the same box, marked "DO NOT TOUCH", with Martin McGuinness.

fryup

hotmail.com wrote: »

No matter what Norris said or did or promised, a section of the population just wouldn't vote for a gay, posh, privileged, Protestant to be the next president.

esp down the sticks, he may be popular amongst D4 south dublin types but less so in other parts of the country

his campaign is very Dublin centric anyway> don't think i've seen him down the country yet

big mistake for him to re-enter the race, he must have believed the media hype about half the electorate voting for him but that was mainly due to public sympathy and that faded by the time he threw his hat back in the ring

he said he'll be financial ruin if he loses, which makes his decision to re-enter all the more foolish

Happyman42

To allow your ego to fool you once, is forgiveable....eventually,
To allow it to fool you twice is.... laughable.
I will consider his, Dana's, Mary Davis's and (please God, Allah, Bhudda etc.) Gay Mitchell's lost deposits, 'pay-back' for the Irish exchequer.

His campaign team cannot make a silk purse from the sow's ear.

Lamph

I think David Norris would make for a good figurehead. He has dignity and character... What more do you need in an Irish president? It's not like they actually *do* anything!!!

And I don't know if any of ye saw him on te Late Late show debate where he spoke briefly about the clemency letters, and included in his speech the classic lines,

"I've done it on Matt Cooper
I've done it on George Hook
I've done it with Sean O'Rourke
I've done it with Pat Kenny!"

Well, when I heard that, I couldn't resist the temptation to do this...

***WARNING -May be offensive to some***

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIaDwVBYeEI

***WARNING -May be offensive to some***

My prediction is -There won't be videos like this made for any of the other candidates... because plain and simple -none of them are as colourful as him. I'd be happy with David N, or Michael D for president.

anymore

fryup wrote: »

esp down the sticks, he may be popular amongst D4 south dublin types but less so in other parts of the country

his campaign is very Dublin centric anyway> don't think i've seen him down the country yet

big mistake for him to re-enter the race, he must have believed the media hype about half the electorate voting for him but that was mainly due to public sympathy and that faded by the time he threw his hat back in the ring

he said he'll be financial ruin if he loses, which makes his decision to re-enter all the more foolish

I am afraid I am a bit skeptical about his claims of financial ruin. Mr Norris is by the standards of the oridinary person wealthy. He has a very large house in Dublin, a prorerty in Cyprus and multiple public sector pensions. His declaration the Seanad Register of interests also showed he had income a a journalist and after dinner speaker.From his comments he would also seem to have had significant personal savings. significant His lack of election posters suggests he is one of the lowest spending candidates and of course he was running campaign generating contributions in the those heady days when he was leading the polls.
So I am inclined to think the notion of financial ruin is aimed at generating more sympathy for him in the same way he starts blubbing about lonely he was when he was a teen when the questions start getting difficult. This was particularly noticeable on the Tubridy interview when he went straight ot the ' I was so lonely routine' when trying to evade questions about sex issues.

anymore

Lamph wrote: »

I think David Norris would make for a good figurehead. He has dignity and character... What more do you need in an Irish president? It's not like they actually *do* anything!!!

And I don't know if any of ye saw him on te Late Late show debate where he spoke briefly about the clemency letters, and included in his speech the classic lines,

"I've done it on Matt Cooper
I've done it on George Hook
I've done it with Sean O'Rourke
I've done it with Pat Kenny!"

Well, when I heard that, I couldn't resist the temptation to do this...

***WARNING -May be offensive to some***

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIaDwVBYeEI

***WARNING -May be offensive to some***

My prediction is -There won't be videos like this made for any of the other candidates... because plain and simple -none of them are as colourful as him. I'd be happy with David N, or Michael D for president.

Is the video supposed to help or hurt him ???????

Happyman42

anymore wrote: »

Is the video supposed to help or hurt him ???????

I dunno, but it hurt me! :mad:

fryup

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

Very true. I think he got a bit carried away with what he thought was substantial support. He's not a real politician, never fought an election in his life.

well in fairness neither was mary robinson and mary mcellesse

anymore

fryup wrote: »

well in fairness neither was mary robinson and mary mcellesse

Good to see Mary McAlesse getting a mention here because it was Mary McAleese and David Norrs who started the campiagn for gay equality !
I didnt know that until I was pointed, by a gay friend, to the history of the gay clubs in TCD. I was under the impression that Mr Norris had done it all ' singlehandely !
It is not often you see a good catholic like mary McAleese getting credit for promoting gay equality and rights.

newmug

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

I was watching Stephen Fry on BBC last night, and in a bit about Joyce, there he was in Dublin, talking to...

David Norris. A non-shouty David Norris, who came across as warm and knowledgeable, funny and charming.

That was the David Norris that 30% of those polled supported early on. But that David Norris didn't show up for the campaign.

Edit: I'll still be giving him my #1, mind you.

Why? You've just admitted a normal version of DN did not "show up for the campaign".

Lamph wrote: »

Well, when I heard that, I couldn't resist the temptation to do this...

***WARNING -May be offensive to some***

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIaDwVBYeEI

***WARNING -May be offensive to some***

Haha, that is brilliant!

I suspect DN is getting a lot of his support from former Green voters

Snakeblood

fryup wrote: »

esp down the sticks, he may be popular amongst D4 south dublin types but less so in other parts of the country

his campaign is very Dublin centric anyway> don't think i've seen him down the country yet

He has been all over, for what it's worth. Just because you don't hear about things doesn't mean they're not happening.

anymore

He tries to organise it so only supporters turn up and not those who might ask the awkward questions !

Pepe LeFrits

I’d echo many of the comments here.

The letters lost my vote really. I can understand but can’t forgive it as far as electability goes. It’s a shame as I’m a big fan of David Norris. I went to one of his open meetings a few months back (although that’s as far as my involvement went) and was impressed by him - plenty of ego for sure but I do believe he is a charming, warm, principled and decent man who in different circumstances could have been a fine ambassador for the country. His campaign has been a car crash in slow motion.

Happyman42

Pepe LeFrits wrote: »

His campaign has been a car crash in slow motion.

Too true.....interesting too how all his support here fell off the tackle.
Instead of being an heroic also ran he has ended up looking a bit pathetic and his reputation is in tatters.

alastair

Happyman42 wrote: »

Too true.....interesting too how all his support here fell off the tackle.
Instead of being an heroic also ran he has ended up looking a bit pathetic and his reputation is in tatters.

Norris still has a respectable level of support. If you honestly think he'll lose his deposit you've some blinkers on. His reputation seems pretty solid if the response to last night's debate is anything to go on.

anymore

alastair wrote: »

Norris still has a respectable level of support. If you honestly think he'll lose his deposit you've some blinkers on. His reputation seems pretty solid if the response to last night's debate is anything to go on.

Increasingly the response to David Noris is boredom