Christine O'Donnell

Christine Therese "Not a Witch" O'Donnell was the Republican candidate for the 2010 Senate election in Delaware. She scored an upset primary victory over moderate Rep. Mike Castle, blowing an excellent Republican opportunity for a pickup and ultimately losing to Democrat Chris Coons by a wide margin. She is not a witch.

Craziness
O'Donnell was one of the Tea Party-endorsed wingnuts contesting the 2010 elections. She's a Young Earth Creationist and would like this to be taught in schools along with evolution. In 2007, she claimed that evil scientists were crossbreeding humans and mice and had even created mice with "fully functioning human brains". Unfortunately, O'Donnell never got around to making an appointment with them.

Facing strong opposition from the Republican establishment during her campaign, she exhibited symptoms of outright paranoia, claiming that she was being "followed" and had her team regularly check the vicinity of her house for threats. She also implied that her 2008 campaign office was vandalized by supporters of Castle &mdash; not Joe Biden, whom she was running against at the time &mdash; something which she didn't report back when it allegedly happened.

According to her, Christianity is the correct religion because it allows the consumption of meatballs though rationally she should have preferred the FSM.

The truth as she sees it
She was caught lying on several occasions, among them her claim that she had won two out of three Delaware counties in her 2008 35-to-64% drubbing at the hands of Joe Biden, and a claim made in a lawsuit against a former employer that she had enrolled for a Master's degree at Princeton, when she never even finished her Bachelor's degree. This despite her belief that lying is always wrong; when on Politically Incorrect she was asked by Eddie Izzard if she'd even lie to the Nazis about hiding Jews, she claimed that God always provides a way out and you never have to practice deception.

O'Donnell on sexuality
She's opposed to masturbation, arguing that it's "lusting in your heart" (not in your hand, apparently) and thus on the same level as adultery.

She is also the founder of "The SALT" (The Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth), a now-defunct advocacy group aimed at American youth. The SALT railed against abortion, sex education and homosexuality. According to Wade Richards, The SALT's only other known employee, O'Donnell ran the program out of her California apartment. At the time, Richards was a 20-year-old gay man who was trying mightily to suppress his sexuality. He even tried to be ex-gay, but couldn't keep up the charade. One of the people who helped him accept himself as he is was Christine's openly lesbian sister, so it seems something good came out of the group's activities.

O'Donnell is still as anti-gay as ever. Maybe more so. During her 2010 primary campaign, her supporters hinted that her opponent &mdash; a current nine-term congressman and former two-term governor of Delaware &mdash; was having a gay affair.

Of course, who are we to judge a 41-year-old gay-basher with gay siblings?

Witch
Christine O'Donnell: I'm not a witch!

Bedivere: But you are dressed as one.

Christine: They dressed me up like this.

Crowd: No, we didn't… no.

Christine: And this isn't my nose, it's a false one.

Bedivere: Well?

Villager #1: Well, we did do the nose.

Bedivere: The nose?

Villager #1: And the hat &mdash; but she is a witch!

Crowd: Burn her! Witch! Witch! Burn her!

Yes, in 21st Century America, she had to state firmly that she wasn't a witch in an advertising campaign. The rumors that she was a witch (yes, an actual witch) began after a video of her saying she "dabbled" in witchcraft on Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect in 1999 was rebroadcast on Maher's Real Time with Bill Maher. It went a bit viral around the internet and sparked rumors that she was actually a witch. Of course, Maher's rebroadcast was a little bit of a quote mine as O'Donnell at the time was saying how she got out of "dabbling" in witchcraft. So she's just an ex-witch, which is different. Of course, since she proved not to know a thing about the practices of real witches, she was probably lying about that too (or, perhaps, had an idiosyncratic idea of what witchcraft is). Either way, trying to end the rumors with a campaign ad that starts out "I'm not a witch" did not help her chances.

Republicans on O'Donnell
Her insurgent candidacy and bleak chances in the general election didn't make her very popular within her own party. While she did score a late primary endorsement from fellow mama grizzly wingnut Sarah Palin, the establishment was united in opposition against her. Her own party's state chairman judged that she "couldn't be elected dog catcher", and Karl Rove accused her of saying "nutty things", being on the side of truth for once.

Where is she now?
In 2011, she wrote a crappy book about her Senate campaigns where she whines about the experience.

Since her political campaign, she has written opinion pieces for the Washington Times. Although still listed as a staff member, she hasn't authored any stories since February 2015.

A 2020 snapshot of O'Donnell's "ChristinePAC" political action committee shows that between 2019 and 2020, the PAC raised no money, spent US$336, and reported over US$32 thousand in debts.