“Unelectable”

The reaction to Christine O'Donnell's upset win in the Republican Senate primary in Delaware has tended to blur several factors that need to be kept distinct.

O'Donnell is described as both "extreme" and "unelectable" — two things that are related, but separate. Each also contains more than one idea and it may be helpful to separate those out as well.

Regarding O'Donnell's "electability," Tom Ross, chairman of Delaware's Republican Party, said she was someone who "could not get elected dogcatcher." Part of what he meant by that was that O'Donnell has little appeal for swing voters or for Delaware's large constituency of registered Democrats. The numbers seem to bear that out. In her primary victory, O'Donnell won 30,000 votes — about a sixth of Delaware's registered Republicans or roughly 5 percent of the total electorate. That fractious fraction will almost certainly vote for her again in the general election with great enthusiasm, but it's not at all clear that anyone else will.

We should be clear that this is by design. It is intentional and deliberate. O'Donnell's loyal following was created in large measure by assuring them that they and they alone are good, patriotic and legitimate. That approach has limited appeal because it makes a limited appeal. The other 19 out of every 20 Delawareans is unlikely to be enticed to vote for O'Donnell due to her constantly telling them they are evil and not authentically American. O'Donnell may be willing to accept the general election support of those she condemns as anti-American kitten-burners, but it's not likely they will be inclined to offer that support.

So "electability," on one level, has to do with numbers and with the stark pie-chart of Delaware's electorate and what it says about Christine O'Donnell's chances.

The numbers and voters represented by that pie chart are not just due to campaign rhetoric, but also to actual policies advocated by the various candidates. The matter of policy is one place where "extreme" and "unelectable" overlap. O'Donnell wants to repeal health care reform before full benefits kick in. Most voters disagree. She doesn't think full employment is something that governments have a
responsibility to pursue and ensure. Most voters disagree. She vehemently wants to overturn both Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut. Most voters vehemently disagree. Her platform is largely unpopular.

We'll get back to that platform in a later post, but what I mainly want to address here is the other way in which Christine O'Donnell is extreme — completely apart from anything having to do with policy. It is her extreme behavior, not her extreme policy preferences, that make her, in fact, "unelectable" in a way that has nothing to do with polls or politicking. What I mean is that, if the allegations about her are true, Christine O'Donnell is not fit for office.

Every candidate brings a certain amount of baggage — past indiscretions, misstatements, personal failings. O'Donnell has more than the usual share of these. Many of them are substantial — her anti-masturbation crusade, her misrepresentations of her college degree, her misrepresentations of her lawsuit against her last full-time employer, her misrepresentations of her personal finances, tax history and foreclosure, the gap between her advocacy of abstinence and chastity and her apparent living situation, her weird belief that 71-year-old Mike Castle hides in her bushes at night, her lack of gainful employment, her unsubstantiated claims of politically motivated burglary at her home. That's quite a list — and there's more where that came from — but that's not what I mean when I refer to O'Donnell's extreme behavior. All of that, separately or cumulatively, might be characterized as extreme, but that's not the most extreme aspect of her behavior. So bracket all of that.

The real reason Christine O'Donnell is unelectable is that she allegedly has violated campaign finance laws on a daily basis for years, enriching herself and her boyfriend with political contributions.

O'Donnell's home address — the one she lists on her voter registration — is the townhouse pictured above where she lives with her boyfriend (notice it doesn't have bushes). That townhouse is apparently paid for in large measure by campaign contributions, as is her income and that of her boyfriend/aide.

O'Donnell has thus far failed to explain how this apparent arrangement is legal.

The problem, in other words, is not that Christine O'Donnell is too extreme in her policy views or that she has made every effort to alienate the swing voters she would need to be elected. The problem is that she appears to have broken several campaign laws — that she appears to still be breaking those laws. She is still living in a home allegedly paid for with campaign donations and matching public finances. She is still living on income allegedly drawn from those same funds — as is her boyfriend.

O'Donnell has never been forced to answer these allegations or to provide any explanation for them. This was partly due, I suspect, to a misplaced pity. O'Donnell has, for years, been viewed as an earnest-but-dim perennial single-issue candidate who didn't really matter much and thus wasn't worth the effort of exposing or accusing. She no longer enjoys that privilege of being inconsequential.

It's possible that O'Donnell is, in fact, completely innocent of any massive, long-term campaign fraud. The overwhelming appearance of wrongdoing here may be only that — an appearance. She has never corrected the public record that creates this appearance of wrongdoing, but it's possible that everything everyone thinks they know about her unreported income and her dubious living arrangements is incorrect. It's also possible that her boyfriend is a legal savant who found and exploited some loophole in campaign finance law that had heretofore eluded people like Ted Stevens and Dan Rostenkowski and their armies of lawyers. That's all possible.

But it's also possible that the appearance of wrongdoing here is an accurate reflection of actual wrongdoing. It's possible that the allegations that she has never explained or refuted are actually true — that she has been pocketing campaign contributions and federal matching dollars from taxpayers and using them for her own living expenses.

And if that is the case, she may wind up serving a term in a federal institution, but it will be a place far from Capitol Hill.