Christine O'Donnell

O'Donnell was born in Philadelphia and raised in Moorestown, New Jersey. 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. 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. 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. 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, 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. 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 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. 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. ==Political campaigns==

2006 U.S. Senate election in Delaware , with Senator Tom Carper and other candidates In 2006, supporters of the anti-abortion movement asked O'Donnell if she wanted to run against Delaware Senator Tom Carper. 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. after defeating businessman Tim Smith at the May 3, 2008 state party convention with more than 60 percent of the GOP delegate vote. 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. 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. 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, 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. O'Donnell won the September 14, 2010, primary election by six percentage points over Castle, garnering more than 30,000 votes altogether, According to The New York Times, her support largely came from the southern part of the state where Republican voters are socially conservative and against gun control. Endorsements By July 2010, O'Donnell had received endorsements from the Tea Party Express, which called her a "strong voice for conservative constitutionalist principles". In the final days before the primary, she received endorsements from the NRA Political Victory Fund, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, Sarah Palin, and conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin. After winning the primary, O'Donnell began employing staffers from various states, including Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia, and hired a Virginia public affairs firm, Shirley & Banister, that has served major conservative clients. In early October, it was noted that O'Donnell's campaign had raised more money from outside Delaware than within the state, leading to questions of whether out-of-state contributors will have more influence over the general election than Delaware residents. By September 30, O'Donnell's general election campaign had received nearly $4 million in contributions from all over the country. Those contributions continued despite an October 28 Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll that showed O'Donnell trailing Democrat Chris Coons 36% to 57%. O'Donnell's educational record came under media scrutiny during her general election campaign. Despite her 2006 campaign website describing her as a "graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University," she had not been awarded her bachelor's degree in English literature until September 2010 – 17 years after leaving the school and two weeks before her 2010 Republican primary. O'Donnell's campaign originally credited the delay to financial issues (alleging that her diploma was withheld until she paid off student loans), but later reported that she had finished a final degree requirement during the summer of 2010. Also, in a 2005 lawsuit, O'Donnell had 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. Journalists confirmed that O'Donnell was never officially enrolled in the university and only took non-degree courses at Princeton, as she had claimed. Other criticisms involved profiles on LinkedIn and MySpace claiming she had studied at Oxford University in England (a spokesperson for O'Donnell confirmed it was a reference to a certificate she obtained from a course at Oxford overseen by the Phoenix Institute and denies it was presented "as a course run by Oxford University") and at the Claremont Graduate University in Southern California.