Christine O'Donnell

He worked part-time in community theatre and on local television, and did a brief stint as Bozo the Clown in the 1960s.

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.

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 was born in Philadelphia and began her career as a public relations and marketing consultant in the early 1990s.

After attending Fairleigh Dickinson University, O'Donnell was active in Republican organizations and campaigns.

She also worked for such organizations as Enough is Enough and Concerned Women for America.

Later, O'Donnell established her own consulting firm.

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.

She also appeared on MTV's Sex In The 90s, advocating sexual "purity", and was a regular guest panelist on Bill Maher's ABC show Politically Incorrect, appearing in 22 episodes.

In the late 1990s O'Donnell moved back to Washington, D.C., where she continued her advocacy work.

O'Donnell first held political office in 1991 when she worked the polls for the College Republicans.

She was a youth leader for the Bush–Quayle campaign and attended the 1992 Republican National Convention.

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.

The following year, O'Donnell worked for three months in Washington, D.C. for the anti-pornography organization Enough is Enough.

She then spent two years working in the communications office of the Republican National Committee (RNC) in Washington D.C. 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, moved to Los Angeles, and founded her own advocacy organization, The Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth (SALT), serving as its president.

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

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 1998 she published an article in Cultural Dissident entitled "The Case for Chastity".

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.

In 2004, she filed a complaint against ISI with the EEOC saying that she had been demoted due to gender discrimination.

O'Donnell ran for the U.S. Senate from the state of Delaware in 2006, 2008, and 2010.

In 2006, she ran in the Republican primary for Senate, finishing third.

She then ran as a write-in

in the general election, drawing four percent of the vote.

In 2008, she was the Republican nominee, losing to incumbent Senator Joe Biden, 65% to 35%.

In 2010, with strong financial support from the Tea Party movement and an endorsement from Sarah Palin, O'Donnell upset nine-term U.S. Representative and former governor Michael Castle in Delaware's Republican primary for the U.S. Senate; Castle had been favored to win the general election.

O'Donnell's primary win caused an uproar among the political establishment.

During the general election campaign, O'Donnell received national media attention for a campaign advertisement in which she declared that she was not a witch.

She lost the 2010 general election to Democrat Chris Coons by a margin of 57% to 40%.

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 received a bachelor's degree in English literature from Fairleigh Dickinson in September 2010.