Christine O'Donnell, the tea party giant-killer, is barely recognizable to her former staff. Ex-aides unload on O'Donnell

By pulling off arguably the biggest upset of the primary election season Tuesday, Christine O'Donnell shocked the Republican establishment and political pundits who didn’t think her campaign for the Delaware GOP Senate nomination had a chance.

But none were more surprised then the staffers who worked for O’Donnell in 2008, when she made the second of two prior unsuccessful bids for the Senate.


The tea party giant-killer who knocked off Rep. Mike Castle Tuesday is barely recognizable to them. They remember a candidate who was less interested in conservative causes than scoring a television deal, one who suggested dodging campaign vendors, believed she could give the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention and fixated on a harebrained idea to distribute tens of thousands of two-ounce suntan lotion packets to voters.

That Christine O’Donnell lost in a landslide to then-Sen. Joe Biden, who was simultaneously running for vice president.

Kristin Murray, who left her position in the state party to serve as one of several campaign managers for O’Donnell during that race, said warning bells went off in June 2008 when the two were discussing cell phone plans.

"She told me that she thought Joe Biden tapped her phone line," she said.

Alan Moore, who worked on press releases and policy statements for two months during the 2008 bid and now helps run the conservative site Townhall.com, said his conversations with the candidate led him to believe "her priorities were completely out of whack."

Moore, who first decided to volunteer for O'Donnell after hearing about her at a meeting of college Republicans, said that at one point, O'Donnell talked to him about winning a lucrative television contract with CNN or Fox News Channel.

"I informed her that most media organizations prohibit their employees from running for office. She didn't seem to understand and was more interested in getting a contract," he recalled. "She was more concerned about getting a TV deal than winning office."

As the campaign entered the summer season, staff was instructed to compile a 10-page document examining how the distribution of tens of thousands of two-ounce suntan lotion packets could shake up the race, according to several members of O'Donnell's 2008 team.

O'Donnell's idea: To affix a clever slogan to packets that read: "Don't Get Burned By Higher Taxes. Vote Christine O'Donnell 2008" and distribute them at local parades.

"She wanted 100,000 of them," said Moore, who describes himself as “a strong conservative.”

When aides told O'Donnell it was a bad idea and that the cash-poor campaign should conserve its resources for more practical items like signs and bumper stickers, Moore recalled, "She didn't take too kindly to that."

"It was an irresponsible idea," said David Keegan, who served as O'Donnell's financial officer. “And half the people in the street thought she was throwing condoms out of the truck.”

The suntan lotion strategy wasn’t the only thing that captured O’Donnell’s attention that summer. Several former aides said that as the Republican National Convention approached, O'Donnell became convinced she could land the coveted role as keynote speaker — the speech was ultimately delivered by former New York City mayor and presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani — and booked an expensive trip to St. Paul on that premise.

"She felt like she had to go and was hoping she would speak," said Keegan, who said he couldn’t believe what a waste of money it was for a little-known candidate who had raised just under $8,000 by the end of June that year. "When she got there, she got lucky and got seated somewhere and said, ‘Did you see me on TV?’ I was like, ‘what was the point?’ It's not like she set up a Christine O'Donnell booth or anything. She just wanted to be there because it was more of an ego thing. It just drained campaign resources."

O’Donnell’s undisciplined approach to her campaign’s finances in 2008 foreshadowed the criticism she endured this year after reports of her own shaky personal finances surfaced.

At one point in 2008, the candidate traveled to California for a luncheon fundraiser organized by a friend in Los Angeles. Keegan said in addition to spending $3,000 on a trip for herself and two aides, the event itself failed to yield more than a few hundred dollars in contributions.

And a few days before the event, according to Keegan, half of the 500 invites came back to the campaign's PO Box address, requesting postage due.

Keegan, whose job was to oversee the campaign budget, said he repeatedly clashed with O'Donnell over expenses.

He said O'Donnell's phone service got cut off because she had failed to keep up with her payments, forcing her to trek to relatives’ homes to make campaign calls.

"It was always a misunderstanding," he said, describing her explanation when he would confront her about the recurring problems.

When O'Donnell wanted to place an order for hundreds of campaign T-shirts, Keegan said, she asked him to put the charge on his personal credit card.

"I said, ‘No, how are we going to pay for them? Her famous quote was always, 'have them invoice it.' I said, ‘We can't do that. In 20 days, we're going to have to pay for it.’ And it's not like we had all this money coming in," he explained. "Whenever Christine wanted money for something, she wanted everyone to stop paying somebody else."

That included halting payment of checks to staffers, which eventually led to several of them leaving, including Murray and Keegan before summer's end.

But before Keegan finished his projects in August 2008, he made sure he called all the vendors the campaign was using.

"I said, ‘Don't take any orders from her unless you get cash upfront,’" he warned.

Her campaign staffers weren’t the only ones who had issues with O'Donnell. Bill Lee, the 2008 GOP gubernatorial nominee who shared the ticket with her in November, said he attended many of the same political events as she did but decided to seek distance from her campaign.

"She would get off message and just be bizarre, so it reached the stage where I stopped making appearances with her. It was embarrassing,” Lee said. “More than that, I was asking for money from the same people and we went as a team and I really didn't want to be on her team after a couple of those things."

The O'Donnell campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.