Christine Therese O'Donnell (born August 27, 1969) is an American conservative activist in the Tea Party movement best known for her 2010 campaign for the United States Senate seat from Delaware vacated by Joe Biden.

[8] She attended Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) beginning in 1987, initially majoring in theater, but later changing to English literature with a concentration in communications.

[8][13] 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.

[8][14] She then spent two years working in the communications office of the Republican National Committee (RNC) in Washington D.C.[8][15] O'Donnell later became a spokesperson for the conservative Christian group Concerned Women for America.

[16] In 1996 O'Donnell attended the Republican National Convention in San Diego,[14] moved to Los Angeles, and founded her own advocacy organization, The Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth (SALT), serving as its president.

[8][14] SALT lobbied the U.S. Congress on moral issues[17] and promoted Christian values, including sexual abstinence before marriage, to the college-age generation.

[26] 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.

[8] Between the 2006 and 2008 elections, she did pro bono advocacy work opposing the disconnection of a feeding tube for a young woman who was in a persistent vegetative state.

"[33][34] 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.

[30] Her general election opponent was the state's longest serving Senator, Joe Biden, who was also running for Vice President on the Obama-Biden ticket.

[30] 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.

[49][50] 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.

[49][50] When a report from The News Journal in March 2010 detailed her personal fiscal difficulties, O'Donnell attributed the problems to misunderstandings and errors.

[14] In early September a political consulting firm hired by O'Donnell released a Web video insinuating that Castle was having a homosexual affair.

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.

"[59] 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,[60] the state's largest newspaper, The News Journal,[61][62] and local conservative radio host and former supporter Dan Gaffney of WGMD radio.

Following O'Donnell's primary win, Politico published an article entitled "Meet Christine O'Donnell..." that began with the following sentence: The Republican Party's hopes for winning back the Senate rest on a perennial candidate with a sketchy employment history who has dissembled about her education, defaulted on her student loan and her mortgage, sued a former employer for mental anguish, railed against the evils of masturbation and questioned whether it would have been OK to lie to prevent Nazis from killing Jews during World War II.

[14] 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.

[80] Those contributions continued despite an October 28 Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll that showed O'Donnell trailing Democrat Chris Coons 36% to 57%.

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.

[12] 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.

[107] On July 15, 2011, the Federal US Attorney's Office announced it had closed the criminal investigation of Christine O'Donnell's campaign finances and has referred the case to the FEC for administrative enforcement.

"[116] During the debate, O'Donnell criticized Coons for agreeing with the United States Supreme Court that teaching creationism in the public schools violates the Constitution.

[119] 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).

[137][138][better source needed] She signed the Tea Party activists' "Contract from America,"[139] which pledged to replace Obamacare with a health insurance system that is "competitive, open, and transparent free-market.

[9] In December 2010, O'Donnell announced the formation of a political action committee (PAC) called "ChristinePAC" to address health care and tax issues.

O'Donnell stated that she could not tolerate Trump as a Republican presidential nominee, accused him of "inciting riots", and added that she could not understand why evangelical leaders supported him.

[152] 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,[154] and noted that the IRS agent handling the matter claimed he was perplexed by the agency's actions.

[156][needs update] Raised as a Catholic, O'Donnell found her interest in her family religion waning during her teenage years while she considered various beliefs and searched for spiritual truth.