In her first TV campaign ad since winning the GOP primary, Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell assures voters: "I'm not a witch."
The Republican Tea Party-backed candidate has been dealing with questions about witchcraft since a 1999 confession on a late-night talk show surfaced that she had dabbled in it as a teenager.
The ad begins running statewide on Tuesday. It opens with O'Donnell looking into the camera and immediately telling voters that she's not a witch.
She goes on to say that nobody's perfect and suggests that she's just like everybody else or, in her words: "I'm nothing you've heard. I'm you."
Coons spokesman responds
O'Donnell faces Democrat Chris Coons in November.
"It's surprising that Ms. O'Donnell, in her first television commercial, offers no solutions to the problems facing working families," said Coons campaign spokesman Daniel McElhatton. "There's no ideas here; there's no plan."
O'Donnell's comments about witchcraft were made during a taping of comedian Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect" TV show.
"I dabbled into witchcraft. I never joined a coven," she said on the video, a clip of which hit the Internet just days after she stunned longtime congressman Mike Castle in last month's GOP primary in her third bid for Senate.
"One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn't know it. I mean, there's little blood there and stuff like that," she says. "We went to a movie and then had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar."
In the ad, O'Donnell says, "None of us are perfect, but none of us can be happy with what we see all around us — politicians who think spending, trading favors and backroom deals are the ways to stay in office. I'll go to Washington and do what you'd do."
O'Donnell has made light of the witchcraft comments.
"How many of you didn't hang out with questionable folks in high school?" she asked fellow Republicans at a GOP picnic in southern Delaware last month.