Mary Lou to run for Westminister in West Tyrone?

Posted on October 27, 2009. Filed under: Irish Politics, Northern Irish Politics | Tags: Mary Lou McDonald, SDLP, Sinn Féin, West Tyrone, Westminster Elections |

I heard through the grapevine that former Sinn Féin MEP for Dublin, and twice failed Dáil Election candidate Mary Lou McDonald is thinking about running in West Tyrone in next years Westminster Election. Currently the party’s Vice President, Mary Lou really needs to get a win under her belt. If she runs again for the Dáil and fails to take a seat, I would expect that the writing would almost certainly be on the wall for her.

The sitting MP for the constituency is Mary Lou’s predecessor as SF VP, Pat Doherty. It is expected that he will retire at the next General Election.  This will be an interesting election especially if Independent candidate Kieran Deeny decides not to contest the election. He polled over 27% of the vote in 2005 and the common opinion is that most of this an SDLP vote seeing as the SDLP vote fell from over 30% in 2oo1 to less than 10% in 2005. While one would assume that any Sinn Fein candidate would hold the seat, stranger things have happened.