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Who is Christine O'Donnell?

The 41-year-old upset winner of Delaware's GOP Senate primary may be a blank slate to most Americans, but she is no stranger to political bosses in what had been -- until Tuesday -- one of the country's last safe havens for moderate Republicans.

O'Donnell, single with no children, has run for the U.S. Senate three times in five years. She finished a distant third in the GOP primary fight in 2006 before running uncontested for the right to challenge then-Sen. Joe Biden in 2008.

Her claim that Biden had turned his back on Delaware when he joined Barack Obama's ticket fell on largely deaf ears; she lost by roughly 30 percentage points.

Among other things, the cash-strapped O'Donnell couldn't compete with the deep pockets of the 36-year-Senate veteran -- part of a recurring theme of financial hardship woven throughout both her political and personal life.

O'Donnell still has debts from her 2008 campaign, according to the Federal Election Commission. It took her 12 years to pay off college debt from Fairleigh Dickinson University, a recent Politico report noted.

She finally received a bachelor of arts degree in August, Politico reported.

O'Donnell, who has worked as a media consultant, also repeatedly has been forced to deal with the Internal Revenue Service on issues relating to unpaid income taxes.

"I think the fact that I have struggled financially is what makes me so sympathetic" to many people, she said.

On Sunday, John McCormack, a writer for The Weekly Standard, reported that in 2005 O'Donnell filed a lawsuit asking for $6.9 million in damages for alleged gender discrimination and wrongful termination by a conservative nonprofit organization called the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

She dropped the lawsuit in 2008, saying she could no longer afford an attorney.

In addition to raising questions about the alleged harassment, the article questioned her honesty in part by highlighting a claim in the lawsuit that O'Donnell once tried to take graduate-level classes at Princeton University.

According to The Weekly Standard, the lawsuit alleged O'Donnell "lost the increased earning power that a master's degree from Princeton would have created. In the future with proper finances, Miss O'Donnell should probably be able to return and complete that program."

The problem was that O'Donnell never took any graduate courses at Princeton, something she acknowledged to CNN.

She was merely auditing an undergraduate course, said her campaign manager, Matt Moran. Moran called The Weekly Standard report part of a smear campaign being conducted by O'Donnell's opponents.

Politically, O'Donnell is firmly aligned with Tea Party movement, which funneled more than $150,000 to her campaign shortly before Tuesday's primary. Largely opposed to abortion rights and gun control, she has been endorsed by two conservative populists -- former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina .

Among other things, O'Donnell, a Catholic, once headed a pro-abstinence group called Saviors Alliance for Lifting the Truth.

"We need to address sexuality with young people," she said in an interview that aired on MTV in the 1990s. "The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. [And] you can't masturbate without lust."

O'Donnell, who is struggling to gain the support of GOP leaders, insists she will win the general election with or without the backing of the Republican establishment.

"We will get the support that we need," she predicted Tuesday night.

O'Donnell will face off in November against Democrat Chris Coons, executive of New Castle County.

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After graduating in 1987 from Moorestown High School, O'Donnell attended Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she was initially a theatre major[5] and then did course work toward a B.A. in English and Communication.[11][12] She did not grow up as a strict Catholic, but came to a turning point during college when she found herself drinking excessively and engaging in sexual relationships with men with whom she lacked a strong emotional connection.[5] (She would later say of this period, "I know what it's like to live a life without principle."[13]) She became increasingly interested in both politics and religion.[10] She became an evangelical Christian, began preaching sexual abstinence and joined the College Republicans.[5]

She attended her university's commencement ceremony in 1993 but did not receive a degree, due to outstanding unpaid tuition.[12][nb 1] In 1994, Fairleigh Dickinson sued her for $4,823, winning a judgment in New Jersey for the entire amount, according to court documents. The debt was paid in 2003.[4][4][11][12]

Following college, O'Donnell went to work for Enough is Enough, a Washington, D.C.-based anti-pornography group.[13] Over the following two years, she worked in conservative issue advocacy and for the Republican National Committee,[18] and served as a spokesperson for Concerned Women for America, a Conservative Christian political action group which seeks to apply biblical principles to issues of public policy,[13][19] and which opposes abortion.[20] In 1996, she left Concerned Women for America and attended the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego, California.[13]

In 1996 O'Donnell appeared as a SALT representative on MTV's show, Sex In The 90's, in which she advocated for "sexual purity" when dealing with our "God given sexual desires". O'Donnell also advocated against masturbation, biblically equating it with adultery.[22] Two years later, O'Donnell appeared as a SALT representative on Bill Maher's show Politically Incorrect, and argued that since America "took the Bible and prayer out of public schools" we were now "having weekly (school) shootings", and that the 1960s "sexual revolution" led to the AIDS epidemic.[23]

In 2003, O'Donnell moved to Delaware to work for the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) in Hockessin, and bought a house in Wilmington.[4][15] She registered a gender discrimination complaint against ISI with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), after which she was terminated by ISI in 2004.[4] She then sued the institute in the federal court for $6.9 million for wrongful termination claiming that she had been fired in retaliation for filing the discrimination complaint and due to ISI's conservative philosophy that women must be subordinate to men. She said ISI's actions caused her mental anguish,[4][25] and would lose future financial earning power because ISI's actions would delay her education.[nb 2] ISI defended its action by accusing her of having conducted a for-profit public-relations business while on their time.[4] O'Donnell dropped the suit in 2008

In 2008, she was unable to pay the mortgage for her Wilmington house and the mortgage company gained a judgment against her for $90,000; the house was due to be sold at a sheriff's auction in August 2008 when she sold it the month prior to her campaign's lawyer.[4] The IRS has filed a lien and said that O'Donnell owes $11,000 in back taxes, but O’Donnell says that it was a mistake and a “computer error”.[26] She listed herself as self-employed and said she was doing "odd jobs" to make ends meet.[4]

When a report from The News Journal in March 2010 detailed her fiscal difficulties, she attributed the problems to misunderstandings and errors,[4] later admitting that she has "fallen on hard times."[45] She also said, "I think the fact that I have struggled financially is what makes me so sympathetic."[4][46][47]

O'Donnell emphasized fiscal integrity in her campaign kickoff saying, "Voting to spend money we don't have has become the appealing option for too many politicians. The men and women of America know this is not sustainable."[71][72]

In a 1996 discussion on CNN, O'Donnell advocated the teaching of creationism in public schools and argued for a literal interpretation of The Bible's Book of Genesis.[22] O'Donnell has rejected Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, asserting that it "had not met scientific criteria" and that "when you get down to the hard evidence, it's merely a theory."[22]

In earlier years, there had been a discrepancy regarding her university graduation. Her 2006 Senate campaign website identified her as a Fairleigh Dickinson University graduate. However, she did not receive a degree from there until September 2010.

In the ISI lawsuit, O'Donnell falsely claimed to have been accepted into a master's degree program at Princeton University; in actuality, she had not yet received a bachelor's degree from Fairleigh Dickinson and had only attended one non-graduate course at Princeton.

"O'Donnell, a conservative Roman Catholic and former abstinence counselor, advocates the use of federal power to restrict abortion and pornography. But she calls for limiting the role of government in many other areas — including gun control and federal social spending."

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it was "refreshing" not to have to deal with "smut", and she endorses their prohibitive censorship and policies on such matters

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C. O'DONNELL: I'll tell you, I just came back from the Middle East, and it was refreshing. With all that is going on, it was refreshing not to be constantly bombarded with smut all the time.

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Regarding a California survey showing that a vast majority of people want real sex education, including condom distribution at schools: "[E]ven if the population is increasing, so what? So what? People aren't bad. When did humans become a bad thing?"


"[T]he thing that attracts people to The Sopranos is the family element. It shows that America still has a longing for that traditional upbringing." She added, regarding Sex and the City, "It's not taking into the account the physical destruction of going from one man to the other, spreading disease, spreading AIDS.


"[C]reationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the Earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that [than evolution]."


"I'm a young woman in my '30s and I remain chaste." She is now 41 and unmarried. Given her strict views on abstinence, she must therefore be either a virgin who has never even masturbated or a liar.

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