O'Donnell's 2010 Senate run was her third try for the office in five years. In the Senatorial election of 2008, she was the Republican nominee, losing to the incumbent, Joe Biden, by 65% to 35%. In 2006, she ran in the Republican primary for Senate, finishing third, then ran as a write-in in the general election, drawing 4 percent of the vote.
In addition to running for the Senate, O'Donnell has worked as a public relations and marketing consultant and has provided commentary on the Fox News Channel and CNN. She is a conservative on fiscal, social and political issues, including abortion and sex education..
Early life and education
O'Donnell was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and raised in Moorestown Township, New Jersey. She is the fifth of the six children of Carole 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 theater 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. In 1993, she participated in FDU's graduation ceremony, but did not receive a diploma due to an unpaid bill. She was issued a diploma after completing a course in the summer of 2010 to settle a dispute with FDU.O'Donnell later told The New York Times she had had three senior years of college.
Career
O'Donnell first became involved in politics 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. Disappointed that the Republican Party had shifted its emphasis away from pro-life issues after the 1994 election, she quit the RNC and worked for one year as a spokesperson for Concerned Women for America, a conservative Christian group that seeks to bring biblical principles into public policy and lobbies against abortion and sex education in public schools.
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.[9] 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". She also claimed that she had lost future financial earning power because ISI's actions had offered a flexible work schedule to allow time for a Master's program while recruiting her to Delaware at half the salary she expected in Washington, D.C., then redefined her employment after she had moved and bought a house. ISI defended its action by alleging that O'Donnell had used company resources for her own media consulting work while on their time for Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ, which O'Donnell contends was agreed to before she was hired, and that ISI cited this reason only months later after the firing as a pretext.
Financial issues
In October 2007 O'Donnell stopped paying the mortgage of her Wilmington house and the mortgage company obtained a judgment against her in the spring of 2008 for $90,000. The house was to be sold at a sheriff's auction in August 2008 when she sold it the month prior to her Senate campaign attorney who was also her boyfriend at the time.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) filed a lien in 2010, on the house that O'Donnell had not owned for two years, claiming that O'Donnell owed $1,100 in back taxes and penalties as a result of an audit. O’Donnell posted documents on her website showing that the lien was a mistake, as the audit was not yet complete and there was not yet any final determination of whether she owed any further taxes or not, and noted that the IRS agent handling the matter claimed he was perplexed by the agency's actions. In campaign finance reports, she listed herself as self-employed.
After the September 14, 2010 primary, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) alleged that O'Donnell made false statements on Federal Elections Commission filings and illegally used more than $20,000 of her campaign funds as "her very own personal piggy bank" by claiming campaign expenses during a time when she was not a candidate in 2009.
Political campaigns
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 homosexuals have a psychological defect and that "Homosexuality is an identity adopted through societal factors.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. She finished in third place, 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
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 ran on a fiscal conservative platform in 2008, as documented by her 2008 U.S. Senate campaign platform, opposing tax increases, improving oversight over foreign aid, repeal of taxes on Social Security benefits for senior citizens, energy independence to reduce gasoline prices, use of Delaware's agricultural resources as alternative energy to supplement America's gasoline supplies, reducing funding swings in public schools, greater border security and enforcement of America's immigration laws.
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 incumbent 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 trailing 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.
2010
Following the 2008 election, Joe Biden resigned his Senate seat to become Vice President, and the Governor of Delaware 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. O'Donnell quickly announced that she would be running in that election on her campaign website in December 2008, and began fund-raising appeals in February 2009. O'Donnell filed a Statement of Candidacy for the 2010 U.S. Senate race with the FEC on March 20, 2009, a document that is due 15 days after a candidate raises or spends $5,000.
O'Donnell said that her biggest mistake in her earlier campaigns was not having enough funds.
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.
Endorsements
By July 2010, she had received endorsements from the Tea Party Express, which called her a “strong voice for conservative constitutionalist principles”. She was also endorsed by the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List and the Family Research Council. In the final days before the primary, she received endorsements from the National Rifle Association, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, Sarah Palin, and conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin.
General election
Following her primary victory, O'Donnell urged voters to keep an open mind about the unflattering picture that was being painted of her, and suggested that media reports are not always accurate.She delivered a speech to the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., on September 17, 2010, saying that anti-American elites were trying to marginalize mainstream, core conservatives.
O'Donnell's educational record came under media scrutiny during her 2010 general election campaign. Her 2010 bio on the Claremont Institute website says O'Donnell is a college graduate with a major in English and communications. Some controversy involved a 2005 lawsuit in which O'Donnell claimed her employer broke its promise to give her time to pursue a master's degree at Princeton, forcing her to drop out of attending non-degree courses there.
During a debate between O'Donnell and her opponent Chris Coons on October 13, 2010 at the Widener University School of Law in Wilmington, O'Donnell brought up her opposition to activist judges and stated her objection to a recent court decision to ban the military from discharging homosexual service members who reveal their sexual orientation. She was asked the follow-on question, "What opinions, of late, that have come from our High Court, do you most object to?" O'Donnell did not have any objection to recent precedents. Coons, when asked the same question, said he disagreed with the Supreme Court's recent decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which cited the First Amendment to the Constitution to strike down restrictions on corporate funding of independent political broadcasts just prior to candidate elections.
In that same October 13 debate, O'Donnell challenged her opponent Coons to show "Where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?", suggesting that she does not believe the Constitution requires it.
Coons replied, "...The First Amendment establishes a separation."
O'Donnell then said, "The First Amendment does? ... So you're telling me that the separation of church and state, the phrase 'separation of church and state,' is in the First Amendment? The phrase "separation of church and state" is not found in the U.S. Constitution, but is derived from the establishment clause. The phrase itself first appears in a private letter from then-President Thomas Jefferson to a minister.
O'Donnell criticized Coons for agreeing with the United States Supreme Court that teaching creationism in the public schools violates the Constitution.
Polls and final result
A July 2010 hypothetical match-up poll by Rasmussen showed O'Donnell running ahead of Chris Coons by a margin of 2 points (41 to 39 percent), while a similar poll in August had her trailing Coons by ten points (46 to 36 percent).
A post primary poll by Fox News on September 21, 2010 found O'Donnell trailing Coons by 15 points (54 to 39 percent) with 5 percent of voters undecided. A poll taken September 26, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports showed support for Coons at 49 percent; O'Donnell was at 40 percent.
Political positions
On September 16, 2010, O'Donnell said she does not believe in regulating private sexual behavior, and if elected, she will base her political actions on the Constitution, rather than her personal beliefs. She specifically disavowed her 1996 anti-masturbation stance, saying "I was a pundit. I was very passionate in my 20s and wanted to share my beliefs.
O'Donnell has identified herself as a member of the "values movement", and is pro-life. She opposes abortion, including in cases of rape and incest, but if the woman was otherwise going to die, she would allow family members to decide which life to save. O'Donnell opposes human embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and research into cloning monkey embryos.
O'Donnell says that she will never vote to increase taxes. She is in favor of a balanced budget amendment, opposes Congressional earmarks, and supports a simplification of the tax code.
O'Donnell has said that Democrats have prevented the U.S. from attaining energy independence by curtailing the drilling of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. She supports the building of more refineries, and the use of Delaware's agricultural products in gasoline. She opposes cap and trade legislation.
ChristinePAC
In December 2010, O'Donnell announced the formation of a Political Action Committee (PAC) called “ChristinePAC” to address health care and tax issues. Paperwork for the PAC was filed with the Federal Election Commission in January 2011. The filing indicated that the funds of the PAC will not be used to fund candidates for federal office. In a letter to supporters on February 8, 2011, O'Donnell stated that her PAC would allow her to "counter attack left-wing groups," fight the "liberal media" and support conservative candidates against the "liberal-controlled GOP establishment.
Personal life
Originally a political liberal who believed in abortion rights, O'Donnell has said she experienced an epiphany at age 21 when she saw graphic descriptions and pictures in medical journals of how an abortion is performed. "'There's only truth and not truth,' O'Donnell said she realized at that moment. 'You're either very good or evil. She dropped her acting aspirations, began thinking about moral issues, and became an evangelical Christian, due to the appeal of the moral certainty she felt the movement offered. She chose to live a chaste life, began espousing sexual abstinence, and joined the College Republicans.
Raised as Catholic, O'Donnell's interest in her family religion waned during her teenage years, while she considered various spiritual beliefs and searched for spiritual truth. In college, O'Donnell became a born-again Christian and has been described as a former Catholic turned evangelical Christian. She has voluntarily discussed her less disciplined life before becoming an evangelical Christian as a contrast to her later different moral standards. O'Donnell remains open to attending both Catholic and Protestant services.
She is single but has said she is interested in marrying and having children. She walked out of an interview on Piers Morgan Tonight after he requested her view on same-sex marriage. In that interview, O'Donnel claimed that she was a practicing Catholic.
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