Christine Therese O'Donnell (born August 27, 1969) is an American conservative activist in the Tea Party movement best known for her 2010 campaign for the United States Senate seat from Delaware vacated by Joe Biden.
O'Donnell was born in Philadelphia and began her career as a public relations and marketing consultant in the early 1990s. After attending Fairleigh Dickinson University, O'Donnell was active in Republican organizations and campaigns. She also worked for such organizations as Enough is Enough and Concerned Women for America. Later, O'Donnell established her own consulting firm.
O'Donnell ran for the U.S. Senate from the state of Delaware in 2006, 2008, and 2010. In 2006, she ran in the Republican primary for Senate, finishing third. She then ran as a write-in in the general election, drawing four percent of the vote. In 2008, she was the Republican nominee, losing to incumbent Senator Joe Biden, 65% to 35%. In 2010, with strong financial support from the Tea Party movement and an endorsement from Sarah Palin, O'Donnell upset nine-term U.S. Representative and former governor Mike Castle in Delaware's Republican primary for the U.S. Senate; Castle had been favored to win the general election.
O'Donnell's primary win caused an uproar among the political establishment. During the general election campaign, O'Donnell received national media attention for her campaign advertisement, "I'm You", in which she declared that she was "not a witch". She lost the 2010 general election to Democrat Chris Coons by a margin of 57% to 40%.
Early life and education O'Donnell was born in Philadelphia and raised in Moorestown, New Jersey.via The Washington Post. "GOP candidate Christine O'Donnell's stunning Senate primary win raises questions about her past", The Plain Dealer, September 19, 2010. Accessed March 1, 2011. "O'Donnell, 41, grew up in Moorestown, N.J., and attended Fairleigh Dickinson University, though she did not earn her degree until this year." She is the fifth of the six children of Carole (Chillano) and Daniel O'Donnell. Her mother is of Italian descent and her father is of Irish descent. O'Donnell has said that at times, her father had to work three jobs to make ends meet. He worked part-time in community theatre and on local television, and did a brief stint as Bozo the Clown in the 1960s.
O'Donnell graduated from Moorestown High School in 1987, where she was a member of the drama club and a student announcer. She attended Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) beginning in 1987, initially majoring in theater, but later changing to English literature with a concentration in communications. O'Donnell later told The New York Times she had three senior years of college. O'Donnell received a bachelor's degree in English literature from Fairleigh Dickinson in September 2010.
Early career O'Donnell first held political office in 1991 when she worked the polls for the College Republicans. She was a youth leader for the Bush–Quayle campaign and attended the 1992 Republican National Convention. While there she began making media contacts, meeting daily with a CNN producer and giving television interviews that offered a college student's perspective on the convention. The following year, O'Donnell worked for three months in Washington, D.C. for the anti-pornography organization Enough is Enough. She then spent two years working in the communications office of the Republican National Committee (RNC) in Washington D.C. O'Donnell later became a spokesperson for the conservative Christian group Concerned Women for America.
In 1996 O'Donnell attended the Republican National Convention in San Diego, moved to Los Angeles, and founded her own advocacy organization, The Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth (SALT), serving as its president. SALT lobbied the U.S. Congress on moral issues and promoted Christian values, including sexual abstinence before marriage, to the college-age generation. In the 1990s, O'Donnell took a public stance against masturbation, calling it "sinful" and equating it with adultery. O'Donnell appeared on Fox News, MSNBC and C-Span as a representative of SALT. She also appeared on MTV's Sex In The 90s, advocating sexual "purity", and was a regular guest panelist on Bill Maher's ABC show Politically Incorrect, appearing in at least 22 episodes. In a 1996 discussion on CNN, O'Donnell advocated the teaching of creationism in public schools and criticized Darwin's theory of evolution on the ground that it is "merely a theory" or "a myth". She asserted that "there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting [creationism]." In the late 1990s O'Donnell moved back to Washington, D.C., where she continued her advocacy work. In 1998 she published an article in Cultural Dissident entitled "The Case for Chastity". In 2002 she was a Claremont Institute Lincoln Fellow. In 2003 she wrote an article, "The Women of Middle Earth," for the Catholic Exchange.
In February 2003 O'Donnell moved to Delaware to work for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), a non-profit conservative publisher of educational materials and bought a house in Wilmington. In 2004, she filed a complaint against ISI with the EEOC saying that she had been demoted due to gender discrimination. Later, on February 26, 2004, she was fired, and in 2005 she sued ISI in federal court for $6.9 million for wrongful termination, claiming gender discrimination and that her firing was retaliation for talking to the EEOC. She said ISI's actions caused her mental anguish and were a consequence of "ISI's conservative beliefs". O'Donnell dropped the suit in 2008, stating she could no longer afford an attorney.
After leaving ISI, O'Donnell started her own media consulting and marketing company. She founded the Catholic Advocacy Network and again began making media appearances. Between the 2006 and 2008 elections, she did pro bono advocacy work opposing the disconnection of a feeding tube for a young woman who was in a persistent vegetative state.
Political campaigns
2006 U.S. Senate election in Delaware
In 2006, supporters of the anti-abortion movement asked O'Donnell if she wanted to run against Delaware Senator Tom Carper. O'Donnell ran in the Republican primary for the 2006 U.S. Senate election in Delaware.
In a 2006 interview for a campaign profile, O'Donnell told The News Journal that gay people have a psychological defect and that "People are created in God's image. Homosexuality is an identity adopted through societal factors. It's an identity disorder." During a primary debate against her Republican opponents, O'Donnell said that China could not be a friend of the U.S. because among other things, it forced women to have abortions and prohibited the reading of the Bible. She also said China was plotting to take over the United States, and that she had classified information which supported her claim.
O'Donnell finished in third place in the Republican primary with 17 percent of the vote, behind winner Jan C. Ting and second-place finisher Michael D. Protack. She then ran in the general election against Ting and incumbent Senator Tom Carper as a write-in candidate, finishing with 11,127 votes, (4 percent of the total votes cast), a number that was considered remarkably large for a write-in and which gave her hope for the 2008 election.
2008 U.S. Senate election in Delaware
O'Donnell became the nominee of the Republican Party for the United States Senate in 2008 after defeating businessman Tim Smith at the May 3, 2008 state party convention with more than 60 percent of the GOP delegate vote.
O'Donnell's candidacy was endorsed by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, former Delaware Governor Pierre DuPont, and conservative writer and policy advocate David Horowitz. Her general election opponent was the state's longest serving Senator, Joe Biden, who was also running for Vice President on the Obama-Biden ticket. O'Donnell questioned Biden's dual campaigns, claiming that serving his constituents was not important to him and criticizing his unwillingness to participate in debates and candidate forums. Opinion polling during the race showed that O'Donnell trailed Biden by a two-to-one margin. In the general election on November 4, 2008, Biden defeated O'Donnell by 65 percent to 35 percent.
O'Donnell's campaign ended the 2008 fiscal year $19,656.29 in debt.
2010 U.S. Senate election in Delaware
Following the 2008 election, Biden resigned his Senate seat to become Vice President of the United States, and Governor Ruth Ann Minner appointed Biden's chief of staff, Ted Kaufman, to serve out the first two years of Biden's six year Senate term. A special election would be held coincident with the 2010 general elections to choose who would fill the Senate seat for the remaining four years. In December 2008, O'Donnell announced that she would run for U.S. Senate again in 2010. O'Donnell said that her biggest mistake in her earlier campaigns was not having enough funds. In October 2009, she reiterated that she was running despite the entrance into the race of Republican Congressman and former Governor Mike Castle.
In January 2010, Democrat Beau Biden, a son of Joe Biden, indicated he would not run, and Castle became the favorite to take the seat.
Primary election On March 10, 2010, O'Donnell officially announced her candidacy before a small group of supporters at University of Delaware's Wilmington campus. In her remarks, O'Donnell criticized reckless government spending, said that Castle was the most liberal Republican in the House, and predicted that the Tea Party movement and grassroots anti-incumbent trends would be in her favor.
When a report from The News Journal in March 2010 detailed her personal fiscal difficulties, O'Donnell attributed the problems to misunderstandings and errors. She also said, "I think the fact that I have struggled financially is what makes me so sympathetic." Her financial problems became a focal point of establishment Republican attacks. The chair of the state Republican Party, Tom Ross, said, "She's a candidate who runs for office that unfortunately lives off the proceeds." Several commentators said the attacks showed elements of sexism. The Delaware Republican Party sponsored last minute robocalls from former O'Donnell staff members charging that O'Donnell was "no conservative" and was financially irresponsible. O'Donnell responded by saying the attacks on her finances were an insult to Delaware voters.
In the final weeks before the primary, O'Donnell became firmly allied with the Tea Party movement which provided last minute funding to her campaign amounting to more than $250,000, according to Fox News, with the Tea Party Express saying it might spend as much as $600,000 backing O'Donnell.
Castle ignored O'Donnell's candidacy and refused to debate her, calling her dishonest. In early September a political consulting firm hired by O'Donnell released a Web video insinuating that Castle was having a homosexual affair. O'Donnell attempted to distance herself from the claim, stating that the consulting firm was no longer working for her campaign. She then appeared on Mark Levin's radio show, accusing Castle of engaging in "unmanly tactics" during the campaign and saying, "this is not a bake-off, put your man-pants on."
National attention brought additional scrutiny of her record, and repeated questions about the accuracy of her statements from national and local political leaders and news media including Karl Rove, the state's largest newspaper, The News Journal, and local conservative radio host and former supporter Dan Gaffney of WGMD radio. O'Donnell's responses consisted of correcting the information, brushing it aside, or downplaying the discrepancies.