Dover, Del. ? She has used campaign contributions to help pay the rent, taken more than 20 years to get her bachelor’s degree and equated masturbation with adultery. And she just stunned the GOP establishment by beating a nine-term congressman and two-term governor in Delaware’s U.S. Senate primary election.

Now Republicans across the country and even many Delaware residents want to know: Who is Christine O’Donnell?

“I’m an average, hardworking citizen,” the 41-year-old said Wednesday.

The conservative activist’s win Tuesday highlights the power of the tea party movement that championed her, the vulnerability of longtime officeholders and a tricky calculus for Republicans hoping to gain congressional majorities in November. Much of the cheering after her victory over Rep. Mike Castle came from Democrats who consider O’Donnell a weaker opponent who will alienate moderate Republicans.

“That creates opportunities for us,” Democratic National Committee chief Tim Kaine told NBC’s “Today” on Wednesday.

Former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove, who is now trying to fashion GOP majorities in Congress, said much the same thing on Fox News: “This is not a race we’re going to be able to win.”

Castle said through a spokeswoman he does not intend to support O’Donnell. But other Republicans including Sarah Palin and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, rushed to O’Donnell’s defense, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney sent $5,000 from his political action committee for her campaign.

Those who think she isn’t electable should “buck up,” Palin, who had endorsed O’Donnell, told Fox News.

O’Donnell accused critics within her party of “Republican cannibalism.”

“We have to rise above this nastiness and unify for the greater good, because there’s a lot of work to be done and there are a lot of people who want to get involved if the Republican Party would,” O’Donnell said in an interview with The Associated Press.

For many Delaware residents O’Donnell remains a mystery, even though more than 30,000 of them voted for her Tuesday.

“I’ve seen the name, but I haven’t heard much about her,” Annette Carney, a Cheswold resident in her 50s who works in child care, said Wednesday.

“I’m surprised that she won against Castle,” added Carney, who did not vote in Tuesday’s primary. “He’s been around forever.”

O’Donnell first stepped into the political spotlight in the mid-1990s as a conservative activist and cable TV commentator, focusing on issues such as abortion, homosexuality and premarital sex.

O’Donnell’s 2006 resume showed that she worked about 18 months as a marketing coordinator for the Republican National Committee, beginning in December 1993, before spending a year as a press secretary for Concerned Women for America, a group that says it works to “bring biblical principles into all levels of public policy.”

She has not had a steady job in years, and former campaign staffers have suggested she has lived off campaign contributions. Finance reports show that political contributions have helped pay her rent because her townhouse has served as her campaign office.

O’Donnell denies misspending, saying that she has “sold just about every asset I have” and that “I cashed it all out, but I have savings.”