With mid-term elections only two weeks away, Delaware Senate Candidates Chris Coons and Christine O’Donnell debated for a third time, Tuesday morning.
The debate took place in the Ruby R. Vale Moot Courtroom at the Widener University School of Law.
The two candidates answered questions from a panel of area journalists.
O'Donnell challenged her Democratic rival Tuesday to show where the Constitution requires separation of church and state, drawing swift criticism from her opponent, laughter from her law school audience and a quick defense from prominent conservatives.
“Where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?” O'Donnell asked while Coons, an attorney, sat a few feet away.
Coons responded that O'Donnell's question “reveals her fundamental misunderstanding of what our Constitution is. ... The First Amendment establishes a separation.”
She interrupted to say, “The First Amendment does? ... So you're telling me that the separation of church and state, the phrase ‘separation of church and state,’ is in the First
Amendment?”
Politics
Her campaign issued a statement later saying O'Donnell “was not questioning the concept of separation of church and state as subsequently established by the courts. She simply made the point that the phrase appears nowhere in the Constitution.”
Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh made the same point in his radio program soon after the debate, saying, “There's nothing in the Constitution about separation of church and state.”
The controversy was the latest to befall O'Donnell in a race where she trails badly in the polls against Coons. And has fought back against allegations that she is a witch.
The Delaware Senate race has received massive media attention thanks to comments about witchcraft that O’Donnell made during past television appearances on "Politically Incorrect" and CNN.
