NEWARK, Del. — Trailing by double digits in most polls, Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell went on the offensive Wednesday, attacking Democrat Chris Coons as a career politician with Marxist views who would raise taxes and rubber-stamp Democratic policies.
During their nationally televised debate, Coons portrayed O’Donnell as an extremist more interested in clever sound bites than offering solutions to the problems confronting the nation.
O’Donnell, a Tea Party favorite, has drawn attention for her comments years ago that she dabbled in witchcraft as a teenager and opposed masturbation in a crusade against premarital sex. She frequently sought Wednesday to distance herself from her past views, softening her rhetoric on issues such as homosexuality and evolution.
“We’re moving past that; were talking about the issues,” O’Donnell said when asked by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer why she had opened a recent TV ad by declaring “I’m not a witch.”
O’Donnell said the ad was meant to put to rest the controversy surrounding her past statements as a TV commentator.
She tried to shift the conversation to Coons’ record of presiding over three property-tax increases as chief executive of Delaware’s largest county.
“My opponent has a history of promising not to raise taxes on the campaign trail and then breaking those promises as soon as he takes office,” she said.
The debate, held at the University of Delaware, pitted Coons, who excelled as a debater in Amherst College, against O’Donnell, who has appeared as a conservative pundit for years on TV talks shows such as Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect.”
O’Donnell has been in the spotlight since she stunned the state by beating Mike Castle, a congressman and former governor, in the GOP primary last month. She has been relentlessly parodied by comedians and others for some of her past statements.
Coons addressed criticism from O’Donnell about his college newspaper column titled “Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist,” which discussed his political transformation after seeing widespread poverty during a trip to Kenya. He said the headline was intended as humorous and that he has never been anything but a “clean-shaven capitalist.”
But O’Donnell said the column and his tax increases show he has “Marxist beliefs.”
