WASHINGTON — She’s dabbled in witchcraft, equated masturbation to adultery and says evolution is clearly a myth because apes aren’t currently morphing into humans.
Christine O’Donnell’s entry onto the U.S. political stage has been nothing if not entertaining, and the hits just keep on coming: this week the Tea Party darling, recently elected the Republican senatorial candidate from Delaware, is battling fresh allegations that she overstated her educational background on two professional networking websites.
Both O’Donnell’s LinkedIn and Zoom Info profiles said she attended the prestigious University of Oxford in Great Britain, when in fact she took a Phoenix Institute course that had simply rented out space at the school.
O’Donnell released a statement saying she had nothing to do with her LinkedIn profile, and ordered it taken down. But Zoom Info said Thursday the freshman politician added the information herself.
The Republican nominee was also dealing with news on Thursday that her nonprofit evangelical group is at risk of losing its tax-exempt status for failing to file required federal tax forms for the past three years.
Since her stunning upset over nine-term congressman Mike Castle earlier this month, O’Donnell has been subjected to a flurry of negative media attention that’s centred not just on some of her head-scratching howlers but also on allegations she’s left a trail of bad debts, is living off campaign funds and has fluffed up her education history.
Perhaps not surprisingly, O’Donnell has gone underground and is avoiding the media, much like Rand Paul, another Tea Party nominee, did in May. Paul found himself in hot water for his suggestion in the days following his successful run in Kentucky that government should not force private businesses to abide by civil rights laws.
She’s also avoiding meeting with Delaware voters, and has appeared at few public events in the state since she won the Republican primary. O’Donnell is trailing her Democratic opponent in the polls.
Sarah Palin endorsed the 41-year-old O’Donnell, a onetime marketing executive originally from New Jersey who bears a striking resemblance to the former Alaska governor with their shoulder-length brunette locks and occasional eyeglasses.
Palin, Republican John McCain’s running mate during the 2008 presidential campaign, has been offering moral support as damning stories continue to emerge about O’Donnell just as they did about the self-styled hockey mom when she arrived on the national stage.
"Welcome to my world," Palin said recently.
But even Palin’s notorious gaffes under the media spotlight, including a claim that she had foreign affairs bona fides because she could see Russia from her house, have paled in comparison to some of the baffling O’Donnell blunders that have resurfaced in recent weeks.
"Evolution is a myth," O’Donnell said in an 11-year-old clip on Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect that he recently resurrected on his new show, Real Time With Bill Maher.
"Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?" ("It takes time," came the reply from an astonished co-panelist.)
She also told Maher that she’d once dabbled in witchcraft, and in an appearance on MTV two years earlier, O’Donnell told teen viewers: "The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. You can’t masturbate without lust."
More recently, O’Donnell has questioned whether women should serve in the military because they’re "distracting" to male soldiers and told spooky tales of rodent people that are apparently thriving in the nation’s science labs.
"American scientific companies are crossbreeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains," she said on "The O’Reilly Factor" three years ago.
Nonetheless, O’Donnell’s victory in Delaware is being heralded as a sign of Tea Party strength with congressional mid-term elections less than five weeks away.
Palin, who’s reportedly positioning herself for a run for president in 2012, has advised O’Donnell not to waste time appeasing "the lamestream media."
