Veteran Councillor Horace Oliver Clue is now convinced that he should try to smash a record jointly held by one of his idols and himself.

The representative for the Harbour View Division in the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation is one appearance away from becoming the only individual to contest an election for the now Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) 11 times.

Clue and former PNP President Portia Simpson Miller have contested 10 elections for the party — local government and parliamentary polls combined.

Simpson Miller, who served as Jamaica’s prime minister from 2006 to 2007 and 2012 to 2016, retired from elective politics six years ago. Unlike Clue, who has been triumphant seven times from his 10 outings, Simpson Miller has never lost any of her 10 contests.

Her long innings began with victory in the Trench Town Division of the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation in the local government election of 1974, followed by nine successive appearances in general elections in the constituency of St Andrew South Western. Her victories were secured in 1976, 1980, 1989, 1993, 1997, 2002, 2007, 2011, and 2016.

Up to a few months ago, Clue was undecided in respect of his future in representational politics, but according to him, a cross section of his political supporters in the Harbour View Division have reached out to him and are adamant that he should face electors in that division one more time.

“The next local government election will be my final one,” Clue, 69, revealed to the Jamaica Observer in a midweek interview. “I have thought long and hard about leaving politics, but the people of Harbour View are insisting on one more time. The good thing is, there is a succession plan in place so that when I am out there will be suitable replacements.”

Apart from being a councillor, Clue also served as member of parliament (MP) for St Andrew East Rural for two terms — 1993 to 1997 and 1997 to 2002.

An accomplished football coach, with greater success at the schoolboy level, St James-born Clue is the first man to have coached a team to the rural area daCosta Cup (St Elizabeth Technical High School) title, and the Manning Cup (Charlie Smith High School) for Corporate Area institutions, and the all-island Olivier Shield. He also coached the All-daCosta and All-Manning squads as well as served as assistant coach to Emerson Henry for the Jamaica Under-21 team.

His journey into the political zone began in 1977 when he contested the Santa Cruz Division for the PNP in the then St Elizabeth Parish Council, following the urging of acclaimed St Elizabeth North Eastern MP Sydney Pagon. But he lost by 126 votes to Winston Lewis of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in an area that is still regarded as a bastion of the JLP.

Success again stayed away from Clue by the time the 1986 Local Government Election came around as he lost to the JLP’s Alvin Francis in the Gordon Town Division of St Andrew East Rural. However, in what was considered a major upset, Clue turned the tables four years later and opened the door to his seat in the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation as it was called then.

His big break came in the 1993 General Election when he won the St Andrew East Rural seat by a margin of 2,887 votes and repeated the feat in 1997 with another handsome vote harvest of a 1,998 majority.

By 2002, though, Clue was unseated by the JLP’s Joseph Hibbert, going down by 520 votes. The defeat, he believes to this day, was caused by heavy rain on election day, which, he argued, prevented many of his supporters from venturing out to vote. He also said intimidation by notorious criminal Joel Andem and members of his gang drove fear into PNP-registered voters.

The loss led Clue to put in, as described by him, “a lot of work”, and the following year he won the Harbour View Division for the first time, thanks to a suggestion put to him by Simpson Miller to run.

Still looking to get back into national politics, disappointment hit, as by the time the 2007 General Election came around, he was bypassed as the party’s candidate in the constituency, thus shattering his dream of avenging the loss to now deceased Hibbert.

Why was he not selected as a candidate for the September 2007 vote? Well, Clue put it down to the PNP becoming embroiled in a leadership tug of war. Long-standing party leader and Prime Minister PJ Patterson had retired the previous year, which opened up a contest for party president between Simpson Miller, fondly referred to as “Sister P”; Dr Peter Phillips; Dr E Karl Blythe; and Dr Omar Davies. Simpson Miller breasted the tape ahead of Dr Phillips by more than 200 votes and settled that matter.

The campaign, though, particularly between the two top combatants, was bitter, which caused wounds to fester. Clue was one of those prominently perched atop Dr Phillips’s campaign roost, and he insists that throwing his energy behind the university lecturer and scholar cost him from further venturing into political representation at the constituency level.

With antidotes being administered even weeks before the 2007 General Election, and although a constituency poll showed Clue as the preferred choice among PNP voters, he was replaced by Dr Phillips’s son, Mikael, in a move that appeared to be a fence-mender. However, hampered by a broken hip closer to election day, the younger Phillips lost to Hibbert by just over 200 votes and later switched his focus to the constituency of Manchester North Western, which he still represents in the Jamaican Parliament.

Smitten by the bug of representing people, Clue pressed along in the Harbour View Division, scoring back-to-back wins in 2008, 2012, and 2016.

Municipal elections have been due since 2019, but will likely be held by early 2023 if promises by Prime Minister Andrew Holness are to be taken seriously.

“Sister P and I shared a good relationship, but it’s just that I did not support her for the leadership as I thought that Dr Phillips would have done a better job,” Clue stated. In fact, Clue said he had, before, thrown his weight behind Simpson Miller when she first went up for party president against Patterson in 1992. Some lessons were learnt by him, he said, about how Patterson rallied those who did not vote for him in that run-off, but who were embraced by the now-retired prime minister in a show of unity and party rebuilding.

“After that election, people were saying to me, ‘Your political life done…dead.’ But it was PJ who held my hand, paved the way for me to run in St Andrew East Rural, put a strong team around me, and I won the general election in 2003,” Clue said.

As he prepares to jump into his final race, the veteran said he would like to get more financial backing to assist with projects in the division from incumbent MP Juliet Holness.

“I have a good relationship with Mrs Holness, but I’m not getting enough financial support from her,” Clue told the Sunday Observer. “My dream is to see East Rural return to the glory days, with love and tender care working together. Now, I am having sleepless nights with the state of my constituency after 40 years of hard work and serving the people. Young people are not asking you for a $1,000 again — they want flour, rice, and other foodstuff.”

Regarding the PNP leadership of the St Andrew East Rural constituency, Clue described the existing machinery as “very backward”, and added that a more serious effort ought to be made to strengthen it.

The PNP constituency organisation is chaired by former JLP parliamentarian Joan Gordon Webley, who was the party’s losing candidate in the 2020 General Election. Gordon Webley first went to the House of Representatives in 1980 after a JLP national landslide victory. St Andrew East Rural, though, was thrown into turmoil mere weeks before the election when the PNP’s candidate, incumbent Roy McGann, was shot dead by an inspector of police in Gordon Town square while campaigning. He was replaced by Lloyd “Perry” Stultz (now deceased), but Gordon Webley secured a comfortable victory and became the youngest woman to be elected to the House of Representatives at age 28, a record that remains.

Decades later, in 2015, Gordon Webley joined the PNP, amid mixed reactions by the party’s members.

Along the route to the completion of his political ride, too, Clue is happy to be associated with some of the success stories of St Andrew East Rural and the Harbour View Division in particular — from assisting with education to health care, sports, people’s personal welfare, breakfast programmes, crime fighting, to working closely with the police, among others.

“I am proud that today there are doctors, teachers, nurses, and other professionals who have benefited from the work that has been put in,” Clue said.

In respect of the PNP regaining State power, Clue is optimistic that it can be done before long, but insisted that “unity” must first be achieved and a revisit to some of the party’s earlier success tactics ought to be of paramount importance.

“We need to look at the right individuals to represent the party. We need not always look for holders of PhD or master’s degrees, but even, for example, a shopkeeper, as well, who is qualified to do the job of the people.

“We sometimes get too caught up with too many degrees. We often tend to bypass individuals in the sporting arena and the studio. We need to go back to the grass roots. I still believe that too many of our candidates are seen as capitalists who are not out there doing enough in the field for the electors and working with them. They need to revisit the classroom-type meetings, community council meetings, and some of our politicians seem afraid of attending church,” he said.

“So you must talk to the people, even if they are in the bars, go back to those vibrant discussions we used to have on the university campuses and teach the history because some of our university students don’t know where we are coming from,” Clue said.