THE AWKWARD alliance between the populist Tea Party movement and Republicans will be sorely tested today in the last big primaries before the November 2nd midterm elections.
Seven states will hold primaries, but attention is focusing on the Republican nomination for vice-president Joe Biden’s former Senate seat in the tiny state of Delaware. The Tea Party and the GOP are virtually at war there.
Last week, the Republicans filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against the campaign of Christine O’Donnell (41) who has received the endorsement of Sarah Palin and South Carolina senator Jim DeMint. The $250,000 donation which the Tea Party Express in California donated to Ms O’Donnell’s campaign is illegal, say Republicans.
The Tea Party Express helped Joe Miller, who, like Ms O’Donnell was virtually unknown, to defeat the incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski in Alaska last month. In Utah too, the Tea Party overturned incumbent senator Robert Bennett in the Republican primary.
Ms O’Donnell’s opponent, 71-year-old Mike Castle, has been Delaware’s only congressman for the past 18 years and is a former governor. His campaign has broadcast advertisements highlighting the $11,744 which Ms O’Donnell owes in back taxes, and how she defaulted on her mortgage.
Ms O’Donnell is a devout Catholic who counts a Vatican portrait painter and the film The Passion of the Christ as public relations clients. She has been ridiculed on liberal talk shows for condemning masturbation. “The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can’t masturbate without lust,” she has said.
Ms O’Donnell has also been caught lying in interviews, for example claiming she won two out of three Delaware counties in her 2008 challenge to then incumbent Joe Biden.
When questioned by a conservative talk show host, she replied: “I meant I tied.” But Ms O’Donnell didn’t tie either – she lost by 35 per cent to Biden’s 65 per cent.
An opinion poll released on Sunday night by Public Policy Polling shows Ms O’Donnell leading by 47 per cent to 44 per cent for Mr Castle.
The Democratic nomination for mayor of Washington DC is the other most closely watched race. There is no Republican candidate, so the winner of today’s primary is virtually certain to be Washington’s next mayor. A poll conducted in Washington supermarkets over the past eight weeks by George Washington University shows that the incumbent, Adrian Fenty (39) is 13 points behind Vincent Gray (67) the chairman of the city council.
Mr Fenty and Mr Gray are both African-Americans. Just four years ago, Mr Fenty won the most sweeping victory in the capital’s history, taking every precinct and 57 per cent of the vote. His election was seen as a forerunner of Barack Obama’s victory two years later. The men lunched together in January 2009 and Mr Fenty and his wife were invited to Mr Obama’s first state dinner at the White House. But when Mr Fenty asked for Mr Obama’s endorsement in today’s poll, the White House refused to comment.
Some have drawn parallels between Mr Obama’s sinking approval ratings and Mr Fenty’s fall from grace. The mayor has been extremely energetic, but the black community, a majority in the city, feel he has grown arrogant in office, and accuse him of favouring the rich, white northwest of the capital over the poor, black southeast.
Sinclair Skinner, a former fraternity brother and close friend of Mr Fenty, has made huge profits as a building contractor during Mr Fenty’s term.
In an effort to balance the capital’s books, Mr Fenty has fired 2,500 city employees. Much of the anger has focused on Michelle Rhee, the Korean-American whom he appointed to run the city’s public school system, which consistently ranked worst in the nation. Ms Rhee has sacked some 600 school employees and pegged teachers’ pay to student test results, a move that was vigorously opposed by teachers’ unions.