O'Donnell TV appearances began with chance meeting

Long before the tea party upstart burst onto the political scene last month to win the Republican Senate nomination in Delaware, she regularly appeared as a commentator on TV news programs, representing her own Christian organization and speaking for other conservative advocacy groups. And she wasn't shy about expressing her views, whether about sex, religion, AIDS or even witchcraft.

"It all started during the 1992 convention when I did my first TV interview with CNN," O'Donnell told The Associated Press. "I was a Bush-Quayle youth leader, happened to talk to the producer of CNN on the convention floor, and she liked what I happened to say."

After that, O'Donnell said, she and a couple of other college students met with the CNN producer every afternoon to offer their perspectives on the convention.

"I guess from there your name gets circulated," said O'Donnell, who went on to appear on Fox's "O'Reilly Factor," "Hannity & Colmes" and C-SPAN. She also was a regular conservative foil on comedian Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect," appearing 22 times, according to Maher.

O'Donnell said she never used an agent to book appearances. But she said her CNN appearances, the contacts she made as a spokeswoman for Concerned Women for America, a conservative Christian group, and communications work for the Republican National Committee helped land her on late-night talk shows.

"That's how it works; that's how it still works," she said. "You get on one producer's Rolodex, and that gets shared with all the other producers, and if that producer goes to another show or another network, it just kind of spreads exponentially."

Now, O'Donnell finds herself trying to balance face time with reporters with getting out and meeting voters. But the vast video record she's compiled over nearly 20 years continues to draw attention.

Maher, who now boasts that he "created" O'Donnell, is using their past on-air relationship to try to attract viewers to his new HBO show, "Real Time With Bill Maher." Since last month's GOP primary, he has aired clips from previous tapings of "Politically Incorrect." In one, O'Donnell notes that she "dabbled into witchcraft" in high school (she has since made light of the comment). On another, she declares that "evolution is myth." On a clip aired Friday night, from July 1999, she says with a laugh that she tried several religions but skipped becoming a Hare Krishna because she didn't want to be vegetarian.

Maher has threatened to show a clip of O'Donnell every week until she appears on his show.

"I'm not concerned about Bill Maher. ... He's trying to get ratings," O'Donnell said. "I got him ratings in the '90s, and he's trying to get me to get him ratings again."

When asked whether she still believes evolution is a myth, O'Donnell laughed off the question.