Tea Party Express has Delaware Rep. Mike Castle squarely in their sights in the state’s Sept. 14 Senate GOP primary. Castle is facing off against insurgent candidate Christine O’Donnell in the race and the winner will take on the Democratic nominee for the Senate seat previously held by Vice President Joe Biden.
Fresh from its victory in Alaska’s GOP Senate primary, where the group helped Joe Miller defeat incumbent GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Tea Party Express sees a chance to make Castle the latest victim of Tea Party ire.
The group plans to invest $250,000 in advertising to help O’Donnell’s struggling campaign, which has $20,374 in the bank and owes $9,950 according to its most recent Federal Election Commission report.
According to The News Journal of Wilmington, O’Donnell still has $11,751 in campaign debt left over from her unsuccessful 2008 run against Biden.
The Tea Party Express’ advertising labels Castle as a RINO, or Republican In Name Only, who “voted with the radical liberal agenda of Barack Obama 60 percent of the time.” According to the American Conservative Union, Castle took the conservative position on various House legislation 56 percent of the time in 2009 and 28 percent of the time in 2008.
“According to Club for Growth, Mike Castle is the lowest-ranked Republican in the House,” said Tea Party Express spokesman Levi Russell. “I don’t think he would argue he’s a conservative, and I don’t think anyone else would.”
He continued, “In a primary you get to choose the best candidate, and if you look over Mike Castle’s voting record, he has betrayed the conservative movement every time there has been a close vote.”
O’Donnell faces an uphill climb in the race in the face of strong GOP establishment opposition, which describes her as dishonest and as someone who is unelectable in the state. Castle, the state’s former governor, by contrast, has been the only Republican to consistently win statewide office in Delaware since the 1990s.
“She is not a viable candidate for any office in the State of Delaware,” state GOP party chairman Tom Ross said, speaking to the Associated Press about O’Donnell. “She could not be elected dog catcher.”
A Tea Party Express poll of GOP voters who say they are most likely to vote found O’Donnell trailing Castle by two only points ̶ 43 to 41 percent.
National Journal’s Hotline OnCall, however, says the poll should be “taken with a grain of salt” because it surveyed only 300 GOP voters and has a margin of error of +/-5.7 percent.
Political guru Larry Sabato, of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, believes Delaware has very little in common demographically with Alaska and other western states where Tea Party backed candidates have pulled off upsets.
Delaware has trended increasingly Democratic over the past 30 years, and he believes it has a lot more in common with neighboring Pennsylvania where Tea Party backed candidates performed poorly in that state’s May primary.
An O’Donnell win would energize Democrats and essentially ensure Democratic candidate Chris Coons would win the general election, according to Sabato.
“This is one of the rare cases this cycle when a primary could literally throw away a Senate seat,” Sabato explained.
Sabato plans to move the race to leans Democratic or likely Democratic in his “Crystal Ball” ratings if O’Donnell wins the primary and keep it in the likely Republican or leans Republican category if Castle holds on.
“Republicans look at it this way,” Sabato said. “With Castle, they know they’ll get about 70 percent of his votes [in the Senate] ̶ with the Democrat, they’ll get zero.”
O’Donnell has previously had trouble gaining backing from groups such as the Susan B. Anthony List, which supports pro-life candidates around the country, but this time the group is giving her another look.
“Right now we have a very different environment, and everything we have thought can’t be done is happening all over the place,” said Susan B. Anthony List Chairwoman and President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “And she has had a lot of national attention coming her way, and I don’t put her anymore in the impossible category.”
However, Dannenfelser said her organization has not decided whether or not to contribute financially to O’Donnell’s campaign.
Castle’s campaign has seized on News Journal reports about O’Donnell’s finances to fight back against the insurgent candidate. These reports show that O’Donnell sold her house to her campaign lawyer in 2008 to avoid action from her mortgage holder, and that she uses campaign funds to pay half her rent because her townhome doubles as her campaign office. The reports also suggest she owes over $11,000 in back taxes to the IRS.
“Castle for Senate is running a series of ads to highlight why voters across Delaware trust Mike Castle’s record of fiscal responsibility and to notify voters of factual information about his opponent, as reported in our local news,” Castle campaign spokeswoman Kate Dickens said in an e-mailed statement to The Daily Caller.
The state GOP has likewise attacked O’Donnell for recently revealing that Fairleigh Dickinson University had awarded her a bachelors degree this past week in spite of the fact her 2006 campaign website listed her as a graduate of the university.
“Christine O’Donnell keeps demanding a debate. The debate I would like to see is Christine O’Donnell versus the facts. She’s said so many different things … I’m not sure Christine even knows what the truth is anymore,” Ross said in an interview with Politico.
Tea Party Express is not deterred by these revelations.
“All these attacks against Christine are all personal with very little in substance as far as her positions,” Russell said. “The only response I have is to direct people to what she says on her own website.”
O’Donnell’s electability and integrity problems, however, have caused other conservatives to withhold support from her. RedState.com founder Erick Erickson, for instance, has said that conservatives should “pull the plug” on the effort to dump Castle.
