Publisher's Synopsis
Picture the scene: you're a candidate in the 2007 general election, a Fine Gael hopeful in Cork South-Central. It's a bear pit of a constituency, one of those five-seaters that always frays the nerves. And it's your first time.
Jerry Buttimer, a popular local councillor, was this candidate and while he did not win, he did something unique and unprecedented during the course of the campaign: he kept a diary of the whole thing. From the relentless canvassing and the temporary elations, to the casual humiliations and even the desperate promises.
Fine Gael was hoping to pick up a second seat alongside that already held by Simon Coveney, and Buttimer made a respectable showing. But it's a tough old business, Irish politics, and the second Fine Gael seat went to former TD, Deirdre Clune.
Nevertheless, Candidate gets inside the head and emotions of a politician in a way never done before. In short, it intimately conveys the entire travelling circus that is the Irish political process.
AND there's a happy ending: in July, Jerry Buttimer made it to the Seanad..
