Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell is generally pretty proud of the ultra-conservative company she keeps. O’Donnell made a big deal about her endorsement from Sarah Palin and was the very public star of the Values Voter Summit in September.
[TPM SLIDESHOW: Morals, Morals, Morals! Conservatives Gather For Values Voter Summit]
But when it comes to support from the public face of hatred aimed at the planned Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan, the infamous firebrand Pamela Geller, it seems O’Donnell would rather keep her friends to herself.
Sometime in the last week, Geller’s name was scrubbed from O’Donnell’s public list of high-profile endorsers, published on O’Donnell’s campaign website. Geller was one of the first to step up for O’Donnell, endorsing her bid for the Republican Senate nomination in Delaware way back in May. On her Atlas Shrugs website, Geller was effusive in her support for O’Donnell, who at that point was among the longest of the tea party long shots on the political scene.
“Her candidacy instills hopes in Americans in despair,” Geller wrote.
[TPM SLIDESHOW: Christine O’Donnell: Anti-Masturbation Crusader. Witchcraft Dabbler. Republican Senate Nominee.]
It seems that facing a blue state general electorate that seems to be turning its back on her more and more everyday, O’Donnell has decided that she can live without letting people know about Geller’s praise.
Here’s what O’Donnell’s “Endorsements” page used to look like (you can see the whole thing in this cached version from Oct. 16):
And here’s what it looks like today:
Why the change? O’Donnell’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment today. Geller didn’t either, but she did offer this comment on her website today:
Remember, I endorsed O’Donnell back in the Spring when no one even knew who she is. She wasn’t even a blip on the internet radar screen let alone the national scene. If yshe trashes her early supporters, won’t she trash the voter? No loyalty, no spine, no character. It’s lousy and hardly instills a lot of confidence in the candidate.
Geller blames O’Donnell’s site change on this article from Salon’s Alex Pareene, which first called attention to O’Donnell’s online “Endorsement” list and Geller’s appearance on it.
Geller did not take to kindly to Pareene’s post, which posited that Geller was “not the sort of person whose endorsement you want to advertise.”
Geller described Pareene’s piece as a “rabid, lunatic post at the subversive Salon.”
O’Donnell, it seems, took Pareene’s words to heart.
The TPM Poll Average shows Democrat Chris Coons leading O’Donnell 55.5-37.2.
Late Update: Team O’Donnell sends over this statement:
We have a number of patriotic bloggers who have been very supportive of Christine and the campaign before and after she won the primary, so we couldn’t list them all and didn’t want to single anyone out moving forward.As we updated our website after the primary that was but one of a number of changes that we made. The timing is nothing more than coincidental, which makes it a non-story. People shouldn’t read any more into it than that.
We appreciate all of their hard work in getting the story out and hope that they will remain engaged throughout the upcoming election.
Evan McMorris-Santoro
Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.
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