His centrist government partners, the Fianna Fáil party led by Foreign Minister Micheál Martin also hopes to claim top spot and, with it, first dibs on the taoiseach’s chair.
Even before Harris made his announcement, the 64-year-old Martin was already pressing the flesh with voters at a nearby Dublin crossroads. Reflecting how well his party has prepared for a supposedly “snap” early election, Fianna Fáil issued a string of campaign videos anchored by Ireland’s longest-serving party leader.
Following the 2020 election, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael —rooted in opposite sides of Ireland’s civil war following independence from Britain a century ago — formed a coalition government for the first time alongside a much smaller party, the environmentalist Greens.
As part of their novel power-sharing deal, Martin served as taoiseach for the first two years, while the Fine Gael leader — first Leo Varadkar, then Harris following his predecessor’s shock resignation in March — went second.
They came together specially to keep a then-surging Sinn Féin out of power. And Martin emphasized at his own campaign launch Friday that he had no appetite for including the Irish republicans in the next government, either, principally because he views Sinn Féin’s economic policies as too left wing and unattractive for foreign investment.
Sinn Féin’s campaign, meanwhile, got off to an off-target start. Voters received a fresh reminder of the party’s recent wave of scandals, which have helped to drop the party into third place in polls behind Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.