Tea Party Favorite O’Donnell Falters in Delaware

Senate hopeful Christine O'Donnell stands with Tea Party protesters in Delaware. (O'Donnell campaign)

After Tea Party candidate Joe Miller’s shocking upset over Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) in Alaska’s Republican Senate primary, the media’s attention shifted quickly to an unlikely location — the politically staid state of Delaware. Seemingly overnight, the press discovered Christine O’Donnell, the perennial (and unsuccessful) far-right candidate challenging longtime Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.). Why? Because the Tea Party Express, a California-based organization increasingly picking winners and influencing races, endorsed O’Donnell. It promised to spend whatever it would take for her to win. So, all eyes turned to the first state.

[Congress1] “But wait, it gets better,” read the group’s pitch to its supporters in its official endorsement. “This is a Special Election, meaning that the winner will be seated the day after the election — which means Christine O’Donnell could be the deciding vote in the U.S. Senate to block the Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda during the ‘lame duck’ session after November’s elections, but before the new Congress is sworn in.”

Fresh off a thrilling victory in Alaska, the Tea Party Express is seeking to carry its momentum into Delaware. But while the group’s endorsement and cash infusions into the election have raised O’Donnell’s profile, they have also ginned up additional scrutiny on the candidate. The attention has raised the hopes of Tea Party groups in the area, and might lead in more donors and voters. But it has also led political activists and journalists to dredge up more than a few questions about her fitness for office, lowering her chances of a win on Tuesday.

When the Tea Party Express endorsed O’Donnell, immediately, some expected what happened in Alaska to happen in Delaware. The states do have promising similarities. Both states have small populations where outside groups can have big impacts. Both have closed GOP primaries that block independents from voting and therefore provide an opportunity for conservative frustration to win the day. And in both states, the GOP endorsed a candidate with a host of moderate stances that made Tea Party groups simply furious.

Republicans’ relative moderation led Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate, to endorse O’Donnell on Thursday, on Sean Hannity’s radio program and her Facebook page. There, Palin wrote: “The wave of positive change can really sweep across our land with the election of Constitutional Conservatives who promise to use common sense and rein in the federal government spending! Please support Christine O’Donnell in Delaware. She will support efforts for America’s energy security, patient-centered health care reform, cutting government waste, and letting the private sector thrive and prosper! We can’t afford ‘more of the same’ in Washington. Christine will help usher in the real change we need to get America on the right track.”

“I was hesitant for a while but I’ve since jumped on board,” says local Delaware Tea Party State Coordinator Chris Shirley on her decision to get behind O’Donnell. “I cannot hold my nose and vote for Mike Castle. I told [the state GOP] I’d even consider voting Democrat so at least I’d know what I’m getting.”

Despite his conservative credentials on most issues, Castle’s votes in favor of cap and trade legislation and abortion rights made him anathema to the state’s small but devoted conservative population, which, according to Shirley, has been organizing to get out the vote.

“We’re going to try to get every vote out we can,” Shirley notes. “I’m not going to tell people which candidate to get the vote out for, but I’m going to try to get the conservative vote out. We want to get conservatives to go vote and make it evident that… this is one election that we need you to come out for.”

Meanwhile, the out-of-state funding provided by Tea Party Express has begun pouring in. The most recent Federal Election Commission electronic filings indicate the group has spent at least $69,000 on advertisements attacking Castle and over $78,000 on communications supporting O’Donnell. It’s still small change compared to the group’s outlays in Alaska, but the burst of spending so close to the primary date has been enough to get O’Donnell’s campaign off the ground by getting her on the airwaves.

“Do I think she has a following here in Delaware? Absolutely,” Russ Murphy, founder and director of the 9-12 Delaware Patriots, argues, though he declined to estimate the size of his own organization. Polls seemed to show it: One by NSON Opinion Research for Tea Party Express had O’Donnell close to Castle, 36 percent to 44. If you singled out only the likeliest voters, the poll added, Castle’s lead shrunk to a mere two percentage points.

But the attention brought scrutiny, and O’Donnell has not held up well under the increased media pressure. Media picked up a March story in The News Journal on her finances, revealing that she had at one point or still did owe money on her previous home mortgage, to the IRS, and to her former university. The article went on to note that O’Donnell possessed thousands of dollars in campaign debt from previous unsuccessful runs at office and was paying rent on her residence with campaign funds because she was using it as a headquarters.

Meanwhile, the state GOP lambasted O’Donnell for erroneous claims she had made about winning two out of three counties when she had run in Delaware in her previous 2008 race against Joe Biden, then a senator.
“O’Donnell is hoping that voters have a short-term memory and ignore her record in Delaware,” said Tom Ross, Delaware GOP Chairman, in a statement. “Sadly, Christine continues to avoid the tough questions and will spin her own reality with the hope that the national press won’t catch on.”

News of O’Donnell’s financial difficulties alone might not have done much to diminish her base of support — “The majority of the people look at it and say who amongst us isn’t having trouble?” argues Murphy — but the O’Donnell camp’s less-than-gracious responses to such accusations have only served to further alienate mainstream Republican voters from her cause.

When conservative talk-show host Dan Gaffney pressed O’Donnell on some of the criticisms levied against her, O’Donnell suggested he was being “paid off” by Castle’s camp. Likewise, when the Weekly Standard inquired as to her housing situation, O’Donnell alluded to another home but refused to disclose its location, alleging that her previous residence had been burgled and vandalized by political foes.

“In 2008 they broke into my home,” O’Donnell said, though she admits she filed no police report at the time or ever. “They vandalized my home. They wrote nasty notes on my front door, on my front porch. They jeopardized my safety. They did the same thing to our campaign office. They broke into our campaign office. They vandalized our campaign office. They stole files. My campaign signs that had my picture—they put a spear in my mouth poked out my eyes, and cut out the part of my heart, and wrote nasty names all over those campaign signs.”

Then came the final straw for some Republicans. Recently departed campaign staffers of O’Donnell produced a video on Liberty.com that casually asserted Mike Castle was having a gay affair. The completely unsubstantiated claim, along with the O’Donnell camp’s weak disavowal, provoked outrage from many conservatives, including some who had supported her heartily in the past.

“[W]ithout proof it is meaningless and even with proof it is a distraction from the issues and not helpful to tea party activists or Christine O’Donnell. It’s amateur hour,” wrote Erick Erickson, founder of RedState.com and previous O’Donnell enthusiast. “The O’Donnell campaign, whether they wanted to or not, needed to respond to this aggressively. But then it looks like it is amateur hour there too.”

Further compounding O’Donnell’s woes is her tenuous connection to the state that she’s campaigning to represent. Local Tea Party groups are by no means a powerhouse in the state, and while Tea Party Express has been funnelling money into numerous ads and rallies, it has mainly been relying on out-of-state funds and organizers to make things happen.

“I think what they’re doing is working through Tea Party groups, some of them in Pennsylvania,” notes Murphy of the 9-12 Delaware Patriots. “It’s the [Philadelphia] Center City Tea Party, but I could be wrong. It’s the Tri-state Tea Party also. We have emails back and forth between the Tea Parties and our group.”

O’Donnell’s individual campaign contributions reflect the same pattern of paltry in-state support. A survey by TWI reveals that out of 83 individual donors to her 2010 campaign listed on the FEC website, only nine list their home address in Delaware. One of the nine is O’Donnell herself, who has twice donated money to her campaign. By way of comparison, 141 of 161 donations from individuals received by Joe Miller were from native Alaskans.

Despite her many difficulties, no one is counting O’Donnell out. Mike Castle is up with a brutal ad rehashing some of the criticisms levied at her by the News Journal, and Republican operatives have found the situation sufficiently troubling to leak juicy tidbits about O’Donnell to news outlets in Washington and beyond. But O’Donnell’s lack of the element of surprise is part of the problem. Her campaign, once in desperate need of the limelight, now appears on the verge of being undone by those same factors that launched her into contention.