From top: Anne-Marie McNally (centre) canvassing at Super Valu, Lucan with Catherine Murphy (right) and Soc Dem member Michael O’Flanagan before Christmas; Anne-Marie

The author has a ‘civil and polite’ response to those encouraging her to behave ‘more like a candidate should’.

Also: a big hug.

Anne Marie McNally writes:

We’re so used to hearing the common refrain that we need more ‘real’ people in politics, that politicians should be ‘ordinary’ people who are ‘just like us’. We seek people with real life experiences and actual personalities and normal lives. But do we really?

In the past four months months since being declared as an election candidate I’ve noticed an insidious attitude start to emerge about how I should behave, or what might be appropriate for an aspiring politician. From those who are from a more traditional background there’s a fear of social media and how you might be presented online.

Then there are those acquaintances who think like to suggest that you should perhaps forego a social life now that people might be looking! There can be no doubt that this invisible bar is set higher for female candidates than it is for their male counterparts either.

If me being me is somehow abhorrent to what a politician should look and act like then I would never have been selected to run in the first place. What I would find truly abhorrent would be to change who I am, how I act and what I say because I am now seeking election.

That would be dishonest and would go against the very reasons I’m standing for election. It would also do nothing but perpetuate the growing divide between ordinary citizens and our political system. What would be the point?

Growing up in the heart of inner-city working class Dublin I never looked at a politician and thought ‘yeah, he’s just like us’ (let’s be honest, on the scale of probability, they were likely male) to me they were always someone different, someone who preached to or about the likes of me and my neighbours.

Indeed the ‘men in suits’ brigade were a large part of the disenfranchisement of areas like mine within which young men, by and large, felt inferior and young women just felt anonymous in terms of the political establishment.

In hindsight I now recognise the likelihood that at least some of the local area representatives were from similar backgrounds and probably spoke the same as me. Yet in an age before social media and the ability to truly interact with a person, we were forced to rely on the carefully moulded party image of that person spewing out the tired central party line.

Fast forward a couple of decades to the social media age and real engagement with people crying for ‘real people in politics’. Yet many of those same people will tell you to be careful of what you say, what you wear or where you go.

But you can’t have it both ways, if you want me to be careful about what I say then you are complicit in me not ‘keeping it real’. Is this really what you want or do you truly want someone who is comfortable enough in their own skin to say what matters even if they know that many people will disagree?

Personally I’m highly educated with decent social media savvy and a passion for political engagement. I am also working class, opinionated, with a strong Dublin accent and social democratic ideologies that I’ll defend to the death.

I have online banter with people and in some cases heated discussions. I’m never anything but civil and polite- because that is my personality, not because it’s how I ‘should’ act now I’m a candidate. I like to go out with friends. I go to pubs. I socialise. I post pictures on Facebook of nights out. I hug my friends, a lot, and yes, most of my friends are male.

And yes you may have seen a picture on Facebook of me hugging that guy. Then that other guy. Is that OK for an aspiring female politician you ask? But guess what, you’ve got similar pictures on your profile. Why? Because you’re an ‘ordinary’ person with an ordinary life just like me. The’ ordinary’ person you want in politics remember?

I won’t be changing anytime soon and I’ll be a better candidate and hopefully better politician because of it.

Anne-Marie McNally is a political and media strategist working with Catherine Murphy TD and is a candidate for the Social Democrats in the forthcoming General Election. Anne-Marie will be hosting a public meeting next Tuesday at the Spa Hotel, Lucan entitled ‘Stamping Out Corruption‘ with Fintan O’Toole and Catherine Murphy. Follow Anne-Marie on Twitter: @amomcnally