Former White House Correspondents Association President Ed Chen stated that an environmental news outlet's claims that Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell's GOP primary victory was based on climate change issues is wrong.

Chen, a former Bloomberg White House correspondent, also said O'Donnell and most other Republican Senatorial candidates are “woefully out of step with mainstream America.”

Chen is now federal communications director at the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund. In a blog post today at the organization's website, Chen criticized an article in the Environment and Energy Daily that also appears on The New York Times website. It speculated O'Donnell's win in the Delaware Republican primary Tuesday was based on climate change issues:

It was a conceptual “scoop” that eluded the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, all publications known for their astute political coverage. Even the Wilmington News Journal, which covered the Castle-O'Donnell race day-in and day-out, missed that “insight.”

For good reason.

E&E's unfounded assertion that climate change played the key role in Congressman Castle's defeat was a canard.

Yes, O'Donnell hit Castle for his stance on limiting carbon pollution that causes global warming. But it was a combination of the dismal economy and a raging anti-incumbency fervor that led to Castle's downfall; he's been a towering figure in Delaware politics for more than a generation: nine terms in Congress and stints as governor and lieutenant governor.

“To say it was just climate change mischaracterizes that election,'' University of Delaware political scientist Jason Mycoff told me. ”In this case, you can't pin the entire election on one issue.''

In other words, climate change was hardly a top-tier campaign issue.

He later stated:

E&E would far better serve its readers by focusing on the real choices facing voters - namely, the extent to which O'Donnell and most of her fellow Republican candidates for U.S. Senate are woefully out of step with Mainstream America.