The surprising U.S. Senate victory of Republican Christine O’Donnell in the Delaware primary on September 14 left Republicans in conflict with many senior GOP officials openly fretting that the Senate is now out of reach. O’Donnell defeated Rep. Mike Castle, a respected lawmaker and considered a shoo-in for the Senate seat. The seat formerly held by Vice-President Joe Biden. Early polling shows O'Donnell trailing Chris Coons, the Democratic Party nominee in Delaware.

The GOP needs to win 10 seats in November to take back control of the Senate. The Republican Party’s nomination of candidates such as O’Donnell, Sharron Angle of Nevada, and Dr. Rand Paul of Kentucky has served to put races in play in a climate favorable to Republicans. More than a half dozen Tea Party backed candidates have captured Republican Senate nominations this year. in Utah, Tea Party backers at a nominating convention helped Mike Lee defeat longtime Republican Sen. Bob Bennett. Joe Miller shocked the GOP's elite and beat Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

O’Donnell ran for the Republican nomination for Senate in 2006 and finished third. as a write-in candidate in the general election she received four percent of the Delaware vote. She was the party's nominee for the 2008 U.S. Senate election and lost to Joe Biden 65 to 35 percent.

Christine O’Donnell has taken positions such as:

• O’Donnell has equated masturbation with adultery.
  
  
• O'Donnell claims that evolution has failed tests that would elevate it past the standing of a theory.
  
  
• During the 2008 presidential campaign, O'Donnell accused then candidate Barack Obama of being anti-American.
  
  
• In a television appearance, O'Donnell said that lying is such a moral affront to God that she wouldn't even do it to save the life of a hypothetical Jew from Hitler.

Quotes from Christine O’Donnell include:

• "It is not enough to be abstinent with other people, you also have to be abstinent alone. The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. You can't masturbate without lust!"
  
  
• "God may choose to heal someone from cancer, yet that person still has a great deal of medical bills. The outstanding bills do not determine whether or not the patient has been healed by God."
  
  
• "You know, these are the kind of cheap, underhanded, un-manly tactics that we've come to expect from Obama's favorite Republican, Mike Castle [..] Mike, this is not a bake-off, get your man-pants on." Many believe that O’Donnell was insinuating that Mike Castle was gay.
  
  
• "If we as a nation tolerate sin, generations to come will reap the effects of that," O'Donnell said. "For example, we took the Bible and prayer out of public schools, now we're having weekly shootings practically."
  
  
• "Drag queen balls celebrate the type of lifestyle which leads to the disease AIDS."
  
  
• "We had the 60s sexual revolution," O'Donnell said. "Now people are dying of AIDS."
  
  
• "America is now a socialist economy. The definition of a socialist economy is when 50% or more your economy is dependent on the federal government."
  
  
• In opposing coedization in colleges, O'Donnell said, "What's next? Orgy rooms? Menage a trois rooms? ... [Coedness] is like a radical agenda forced on college students."
  
  
• "Joe Biden would like us all to believe that offshore drilling is an environmental catastrophe, but the facts are that only 1% of the oil pollution in the sea is the result of oil drilling while 63% is the result of natural seepage on the ocean floor."
  
  
• "By integrating women into particularly military institutes, it cripples the readiness of our defense. Schools like The Citadel train young men to confidently lead other young men into a battlefield where one of them will die. And when you have women in that situation, it creates a whole new set of dynamics which are distracting to training these men to kill or be killed."
  
  
• "They're following me. They follow me home at night. I make sure that I come back to the townhouse and then we have our team come out and check all the bushes and check all the cars to make sure that -- they follow me."

Controversies surrounding Christine O’Donnell include:

• O'Donnell's 2008 campaign manager, Kristin Murray, alleges that O'Donnell was living on campaign donations - using them for rent and personal expenses, while leaving her workers unpaid and piling up thousands in debt.
  
  
• O'Donnell confirmed to reporters that she pays one half of the rent on a house she shares with paid campaign staffer David Hust with campaign donors' money. The amount has been reported to be between $1,645 and $2,020 per month.
  
  
• The Christine O'Donnell campaign has paid at least $3,500 in consulting fees to O'Donnell's mother, FEC filings show.
  
  
• It has been charged that O'Donnell illegally coordinated campaign activities with the Tea Party Express.
  
  
• O’Donnell has been confronted by the IRS for failure to pay back taxes. The IRS initiated an audit and placed a lien against her for $11,744.59 in taxes and penalties from the 2005 tax year.
  
  
• O'Donnell was sued by her mortgage holder in March 2008.
  
  
• She did not receive her college degree until this year yet claimed to have a degree during her 2006 Senate campaigns. O'Donnell said she received it 17 years after attending classes due to unpaid student debt. A school official interviewed by Politco.com said the degree was not conferred because she had not completed her coursework.