{"id":88274,"date":"2025-09-27T06:15:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T06:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/88274\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T06:15:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T06:15:08","slug":"maria-steen-and-michael-mcdowell-clash-over-failed-presidential-bid-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/88274\/","title":{"rendered":"Maria Steen and Michael McDowell clash over failed presidential bid \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

One-time referendum campaign allies Maria Steen<\/a> and Michael McDowell<\/a> have clashed over the circumstances that led to her failing to secure enough support from Oireachtas members in her presidential<\/a> bid this week.<\/p>\n

The former presidential contender claimed the Independent Senator declined to back her bid for the \u00c1ras because of a disagreement they had over her appearance on a televised debate in the March 2024 family and care referendums in which they both campaigned successfully for No votes. <\/p>\n

Rejecting the claim, Mr McDowell told The Irish Times: \u201cI believe she is a divisive person.\u201d <\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Ms Steen fell just two votes short of the required 20 Oireachtas members needed to secure a place on the October 24th presidential ballot, leaving just three contenders in the race: Fianna F\u00e1il<\/a>\u2019s Jim Gavin<\/a>, Heather Humphreys<\/a> for Fine Gael<\/a> and Catherine Connolly<\/a>, the Independent and left-wing candidate. <\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the barrister and conservative campaigner blamed an \u201coppressive\u201d political consensus for blocking her attempt to secure enough nominations.<\/p>\n

In an exclusive interview with The Irish Times, Ms Steen claimed Mr McDowell was one of a number of people who tried to get her to stand aside from an RT\u00c9 Prime Time debate during last year\u2019s referendums campaign.<\/p>\n

She claims the \u201cincident\u201d was the \u201conly thing\u201d she could think of when considering Mr McDowell\u2019s motivation for not nominating her this week. <\/p>\n

The Independent Senator, in response, strongly rejected her claims.<\/p>\n

Ms Steen and Mr McDowell accused each other of making defamatory statements in separate exchanges with The Irish Times around their conflicting accounts of a phone call made before a televised debate before last year\u2019s referendums.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0I was painted as a \u2018pantomime villainess\u2019: Maria Steen reflects on failed bid for presidencyOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Mr McDowell, who came under intense pressure this week following his refusal to sign Ms Steen\u2019s nomination papers, said there was \u201cabsolutely no connection\u201d between last year\u2019s referendums campaign and his decision not to back Ms Steen this week.<\/p>\n

He said he was \u201cvery, very uneasy\u201d about sharing a platform with her last year. <\/p>\n

\u201cI believe she is a divisive person,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Ms Steen told The Irish Times that Mr McDowell effectively ignored her for four weeks when she was trying to get him to sign her nomination papers. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe sent one text. He didn\u2019t answer any phone calls \u2013 not one phone call,\u201d Ms Steen said. <\/p>\n

Ms Steen claims Mr McDowell objected to her appearing in a televised RT\u00c9 debate in last year\u2019s referendums campaign against then t\u00e1naiste Miche\u00e1l Martin for the Yes side when she telephoned him for advice ahead of the debate. <\/p>\n

She has claimed he also made dismissive comments about her appearing in the televised debate during their call. Mr McDowell denied this.<\/p>\n

He said he was \u201castonished\u201d and \u201cvery, very angry\u201d she was now making these claims, describing her remarks as \u201cdefamatory\u201d. <\/p>\n

Mr McDowell insisted he had no interest in doing the RT\u00c9 debate. He claimed he had been asked by two No campaigners to call Ms Steen and persuade her on their behalf not to appear in the debate. <\/p>\n

Ms Steen said she thought \u201cthe optics of having two men debate about women in the home were all wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n

On her presidential bid this week, Mr McDowell said he was never going to nominate her for president and \u201cshe knew that\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe knew at all times that I was not going to support her. And she kept putting pressure on me through the media and others to sign her document,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In response to criticism of him for refusing to meet her, he said: \u201cI wasn\u2019t going to meet her because I wasn\u2019t going to say to her face what I thought of her.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One-time referendum campaign allies Maria Steen and Michael McDowell have clashed over the circumstances that led to her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,30253,54811,5,59,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-88274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-maria-steen","21":"tag-michael-mcdowell","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\/88274","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=88274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}