No direct quote from Sarah Palin yet (update: audio here), but on Sean Hannity’s radio show this afternoon, Palin apparently endorsed conservative activist Christine O’Donnell in her campaign against moderate Congressman Mike Castle to be the Delaware GOP Senate nominee. Sean Hannity tweets:
Apparently Palin doesn’t think O’Donnell is a “delusional liar.” That’s what the Delaware GOP chairman called O’Donnell in response to O’Donnell’s suggestion that Castle supporters broke into and vandalized O’Donnell’s home and office and stole files in 2008 when she was the official Republican Senate candidate against Joe Biden (and, no, there’s no police report to verify that the break-in occurred). From O’Donnell’s interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD last week:
They’re following me. They follow me home at night. I make sure that I come back to the townhouse and then we have our team come out and check all the bushes and check all the cars to make sure that—they follow me.
That’s what’s disgusting, as you can see from the YouTube videos. They knock on the door at all hours of the night. They’re hiding in the bushes when I’m at candidate forums. In 2008 they broke into my home. They vandalized my home. They wrote nasty notes on my front door, on my front porch. They jeopardized my safety. They did the same thing to our campaign office. They broke into our campaign office. They vandalized our campaign office. They stole files. My campaign signs that had my picture—they put a spear in my mouth poked out my eyes, and cut out the part of my heart, and wrote nasty names all over those campaign signs.
I would be a fool to be pressured into disclosing where I live, when I know that the stakes are even higher this time. What makes me think they wont do the same distasteful things they did in 2008 when the stakes are even higher, when we’re even more viable. I mean come on, John, you’re a class act. You don’t want to—you know that this is a security issue. You know what they’re capable of.
Is O’Donnell suggesting that Castle supporters vandalized her office in 2008, when she was running for Senate against Joe Biden? “I’m not sure who did it, but I know for a fact that Mike Castle and [Delaware GOP chairman] Tom Ross were campaigning against me,” O’Donnell says. “They’ve been sabotaging my candidacy since 2008. So who knows who did it back then.” O’Donnell says there are no police reports of the 2008 break-in because she didn’t want to make an issue of it at the time. She claims to have pictures of vandalized signs.
In light of Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Christine O’Donnell in the Delaware Senate primary, it’s worth recalling that she hasn’t always endorsed winning candidates. According to the Washington Post’s Palin Endorsements Tracker (TM), 20 Palin-backed candidates have won, 10 have lost, and 13 haven’t faced voters yet.
But Palin has weighed in six times in GOP Senate primaries.*
In Washington state’s August jungle primary, Palin-backed former football player Clint Didier only captured 12 percent of the vote, while Dino Rossi won the GOP nomination with 34 percent.
In California’s three-way race between Carly Fiorina, moderate Tom Campbell, and Jim DeMint-backed Chuck DeVore, Fiorina surged past Campbell to victory following Palin’s May 7 endorsement. (Then again, Fiorina’s flooding the airwaves with TV ads until May may better explain her bounce in the polls.)
We’ll know on Tuesday how her endorsements in the Delaware and New Hampshire Senate primaries pan out.
Correction: This is what I get for mocking the Palin Endorsements Tracker (TM) website: I originally wrote that Palin had only endorsed two Senate candidates in primaries that have taken place so far, but Dave Weigel points out that Palin has also endorsed Joe Miller (win) in Alaska and Todd Tiahrt (loss) in Kansas. Palin also endorsed Rand Paul (win) in Kentucky and John McCain (win) in Arizona.
