Christine O’Donnell, the Republican candidate for Senator who has endured taunts about her dabbling in witchcraft, found a way to hit back at her Democratic opponent on Wednesday — by calling him a Marxist.
“There are more people who support my Catholic faith than his Marxist belief,” O’Donnell jabbed at Chris Coons in an insult-laden televised debate between the rivals for the seat formerly held by US Vice President Joe Biden in the Nov. 2 elections.
Coons, a local official in Delaware who maintains a healthy lead in the polls, said his past references to having admired Marxism had been a youthful joke.
“I am not now, nor have I been, anything but a clean-shaven capitalist,” Coons said.
The exchange set the tone for a nasty debate aired on CNN that was seen as a chance for O’Donnell to prove she is not a political lightweight with somewhat bizarre personal baggage — and for Coons to persuade angry voters that he understands their difficulties.
O’Donnell comes from the right of the Republican Party and is a protege of Sarah Palin, the former Republican candidate for vice president, current Tea Party icon and possibly 2012 challenger to US President Barack Obama.
Prior to Wednesday’s debate, O’Donnell has had to battle against a slew of lurid revelations about her private life, most embarrassingly that she once experimented with witchcraft.
“I’m not a witch. I’m nothing you’ve heard. I’m you,” she said in one of her campaign ads.
In the debate, she went for Coons’ jugular, trying to portray him as one of the big-spending, debt-loving Democrats that the Tea Party movement says control Washington and prevent recovery of the US economy.
“A vote for my opponent will cost the average Delaware family US$10,000,” she said.
“Miss O’Donnell, we’re going to try to have a conversation this evening instead of a diatribe,” Coons shot back, calling the statistics she used “untrue” and sometimes “flat out lies.”
Recent opinion polls suggest Coons is ahead of O’Donnell by 16 points, but Obama’s Democrats are nervous about every seat being contested in the Nov. 2 mid-term elections.
Despite both candidates claiming that they wanted to discuss the issues, not personal traits, O’Donnell accused Coons of corruption, or what she called knowing “how to play the ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ game.”
She also took digs at the Yale-educated Democrat’s privileged background.
Coons coolly dismissed her on several occasions, saying she simply did not know her facts.
“I’m not sure I understand what O’Donnell means,” he said after one attack. “I can’t imagine where she found the numbers.”
“We’ll have them on our Web site tomorrow,” she returned, even more coolly.
It remained to be seen whether the debate had much of an impact in Delaware.
O’Donnell, who has also spoken out against masturbation and the teaching of evolution, is a favorite target for late-night TV comedians.
However, strategists are watching whether her salt-of-the-earth appeal — or what critics would call her rabble-rousing populism — is enough to overcome her awkward past.
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