page_title: Chris Coons
section_title: 2010 election
hierarchical_section_title: Chris Coons / U.S. Senate / 2010 election
caption_attribution_description: English: Chris Coons as the 2010 Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate in Delaware
context_page_description: Christopher Andrew Coons is an American politician serving as the Junior United States Senator from Delaware since 2010. A member of the Democratic Party, he won a special election to succeed Ted Kaufman, who had been appointed to the seat when Joe Biden resigned to become Vice President of the United States. Previously, Coons was the county executive of New Castle County. Coons is the 1983 Truman Scholar from Delaware, and the first recipient of the award to serve in the United States Senate.
  Raised in Hockessin, Delaware, Coons graduated from Amherst College, where he joined Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity. He received graduate degrees from Yale Divinity School and Yale Law School. He went to work as a volunteer relief worker in Kenya, where he had taken classes in the University of Nairobi, later returning to the U.S. to work for the Coalition for the Homeless in New York. He spent some time as a legal clerk in New York before returning to Delaware in 1996, where he spent eight years as in-house counsel for a materials manufacturing company. In the interim he worked for several nonprofit organizations.
context_section_description: Coons ran in the 2010 special election for the U.S. Senate seat then held by Democrat Ted Kaufman, who was appointed after Joe Biden resigned to take office as Vice President. Kaufman had been appointed as a placeholder, and did not run in the special election. Coons was unopposed in the Democratic primary, and expected to face Republican Congressman and former Governor Mike Castle in the general election. He was considered a decided underdog in due to Castle's moderate profile and longstanding popularity in the state, but the dynamics of the race were significantly altered when Christine O'Donnell, a considerably more conservative Republican who had been Biden's opponent in 2008, upset Castle in the Republican primary.
  In the first post-primary polls, Rasmussen Reports showed Coons with a double-digit lead over O'Donnell, describing this as a "remarkable turnaround" given that the race had leaned Republican before O'Donnell's primary victory. In the first week of October, Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind Poll showed Coons with a 17-point lead, 53%-36%, over O'Donnell, and that 85% of self-identified Democratic voters had united behind Coons, while only 68% of Republican voters endorsed O'Donnell. Days before the election, a second Fairleigh Dickinson poll showed Coons leading 57% to 36% among likely voters, and 72% to 20% among voters who described themselves as moderates. As polls closed at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, multiple news sources announced that Coons had defeated O'Donnell based on exit poll data. Final results gave Coons close to a 17-point margin over O'Donnell, with 56.6% of the vote to her 40%.
  During the campaign, a controversy arose about an article Coons wrote in 1985 for his college newspaper titled "Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist". In it, he described his transformation from a Republican to what Fox News described as a "Democrat suspicious of America's power and ideals." Dave Hoffman, a Coons campaign spokesman, said the title of the article was designed as a humorous take-off on a joke Coons's college friends had made about how his time outside the country had affected his outlook. "After witnessing crushing poverty and the consequences of the Reagan Administration's 'constructive engagement' with the South African apartheid regime, he rethought his political views, returned to the America he loved and proudly registered as a Democrat," Hoffman said in a statement to Politico.
  According to Fox News, Coons was "targeted by Republicans" over the 25-year-old piece. Coons downplayed the article, as well as controversial past statements by O'Donnell, saying that voters were interested in current issues such as job creation and the national debt and not "particularly interested in statements that either of us made 20 or 30 years ago." David Weigel wrote in Slate, "If the Tea Party Express slings the 'bearded Marxist' nonsense, I doubt it will work."
caption: Coons on the campaign trail
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