TPM has been looking through Christine O’Donnell’s FEC report and has a report on her late-campaign hires. Remember how she tried to brush away her past “youthful” hard-core social conservative activism? One of her hires was an anti-gay activist.
Recently disclosed financial forms from the campaign of unsuccessful GOP Senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell reveal some of the Delaware Republican’s last-minute staffing changes, including the addition to her campaign of the executive director of a conservative group that crusades against same-sex marriage.
Andresen Blom, the executive director of the anti-gay marriage group American Principles Project, was paid $13,000 dollars during the period running from Oct. 14 through Nov. 22, according to a recently disclosed campaign finance report reviewed by TPM.
Being an anti-gay activist pays pretty well! Apparently Blom was involved in the effort to defeat marriage equality in Hawai’i. Does everyone remember how it seemed that O’Donnell was throwing the religious right under the bus during debates and we wondered whether ther would be any backlash from the social conservatives? There never was and we know why now – hires like Blom were meant to be a wink and a smile at the religious right.
It also paid well to be a friend or family member of O’Donnell.
Campaign records show some of O’Donnell’s other last-minute staffing choices, including the employment of her Christian musician roommate and her sister. David Hust, a campaign staffer slash Christian rock musician who shared a three-bedroom, two-bath town home with O’Donnell, raked in $27,700 for political strategy consulting during the same period. O’Donnell’s sister Jennie O’Donnell, a lesbian who supported her sibling despite her views on same-sex marriage, earned $21,000 in that period.
Jennie O’Donnell and Andresen Blom make an interesting combination. I thought David Hust was more than a roommate – isn’t he also her boyfriend? I know it’s hard to keep up with all the campaign workers/boyfriends that live with her.