She's a telegenic, self-styled Republican maverick with a taste for paranoia and views that range from the hardline conservative to – some opponents claim – the borderline unhinged.
It might sound like Sarah Palin, but is in fact what some are styling as this year's version: Christine O'Donnell, the would-be Republican Senate candidate for Delaware.
The 41-year-old former conservative political lobbyist has won the enthusiastic backing of Tea Party activists, and Palin herself, in her attempt to see off the more moderate Republican veteran Mike Castle and contest the Senate seat.
In yet another parallel with Palin, O'Donnell also has the tacit backing of numerous Delaware Democrats who see her candidacy as perhaps the only way their party can hold the seat, thus potentially maintaining their crucial majority in the upper house.
This is because the views that won O'Donnell the formal backing of Tea Party activists just over a fortnight ago and catapulted her to national prominence are seen as too hardline for the majority of voters in a largely centrist state. Most infamous of all is O'Donnell's assertion – made more than a decade ago but never publicly rescinded – that masturbation is a sin.
The then leader of Christian lobby group Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth, O'Donnell took part in an MTV series, Sex in the 90s. "The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can't masturbate without lust," she told the programme. "The reason that you don't tell [people] that masturbation is the answer to Aids and all these other problems that come with sex outside of marriage is because, again, it is not addressing the issue. You're just gonna create somebody who is toying with his sexuality. Pardon the pun."
O'Donnell stood for the same Senate seat in 2008 and was soundly beaten by the incumbent, Joe Biden. But the concurrent presidential poll made Biden Obama's No 2, and his nominated replacement, Ted Kaufman, is not standing again. Many Democrats wrote the seat off as unrecoverable when Biden's son, Beau, the initial favourite, then also pulled out.
The Republican primary has taken on extra significance, with allegations of dirty tricks from both sides. Supporters of Castle, a 71-year-old former Delaware governor and long-standing House of Representatives member, have accused O'Donnell activists of spreading rumours about Castle's sexuality, something she denies.
O'Donnell, meanwhile, has questioned the focus on apparent untruths on her CV, such as claims she had a masters degree when she was in fact still awaiting the former award of the bachelor's equivalent, due to unpaid university fees.
O'Donnell has displayed a degree of paranoia about the mainstream Republican machine which has raised eyebrows even among conservatives. Earlier this month she told the Weekly Standard that her home address remains a secret, as political opponents – who she hinted were Republicans rather than Democrats – vandalised her home and office during the 2008 Senate campaign.
"They're following me," she said. "They follow me home at night. I make sure that I come back to the townhouse. Then we have our team come out and check all the bushes and all the cars."
To O'Donnell's credit is a folksy, Palin-esque style and an easygoing line in election trail patter. For example, in her response to speculation that Democrats would like to see her win, she said: "To those Democrats, I say, 'Send a donation my way. Let me run more ads. I can make sure that I win [the primary] if you think that it'll be that easy.'"
Various polls have given the lead to both Castle and O'Donnell, but since the primary is open to only those among the 180,000 or so registered Delaware Republicans who bother to turn out, the race appears too close to call.
