{"id":44288,"date":"2025-09-05T00:31:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T00:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/44288\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T00:31:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T00:31:06","slug":"bertie-ahern-rules-himself-out-of-presidential-election-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/44288\/","title":{"rendered":"Bertie Ahern rules himself out of presidential election race"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former taoiseach <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishexaminer.com\/opinion\/commentanalysis\/arid-41699006.html\">Bertie Ahern<\/a> has formally ruled himself out of the presidential election.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for Mr Ahern confirmed he would not be contesting the election.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The former taoiseach had sought party approval last year to be a candidate in October\u2019s election, but did not hear back from senior figures about a potential bid.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">He told reporters last week he was not ruling out a bid after repeatedly seeking answers as to whether Fianna F\u00e1il would support his bid.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">With Mr Ahern out of the contest, this leaves just former Dublin manager <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishexaminer.com\/news\/politics\/arid-41698976.html\">Jim Gavin<\/a> and Cork MEP for Ireland South <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishexaminer.com\/news\/politics\/arid-41697410.html\">Billy Kelleher<\/a> in contest for the party\u2019s nomination.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Mr Gavin has received a total of 31 endorsements from Fianna F\u00e1il TDs, senators, and MEPs, while Mr Kelleher has five public endorsements.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Mr Ahern had only one public backer, Donegal senator Niall Blaney.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">To win the party\u2019s nomination, a candidate will need to secure 36 votes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\n             More to follow.\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former taoiseach Bertie Ahern has formally ruled himself out of the presidential election. A spokesperson for Mr Ahern&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[4488,9,10,18,13,14,4771,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,59,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-44288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-irish-examiner-instagram","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-fianna-fail","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-presidential-election","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}