Michele Bachmann, 55, is a three-term congresswoman elected to the House from a district that includes some suburbs north and east of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota.
She is the founder of the Tea Party Caucus, which has pushed for federal spending cuts beyond what her party’s leaders have accepted in compromises with Democrats. In April 2011, Bachmann was one of 28 Republicans who voted against an eleventh-hour compromise to prevent a federal government shutdown. Bachmann said the agreement was “a disappointment” because of insufficient spending reductions. She calls for reductions in spending.
She entered the presidential primary in June and finished first in the Aug. 13 Ames Straw Poll in Iowa, which will hold the first caucuses in the 2012 primary.
Prior to serving in the U.S. Congress, Michele was elected to the Minnesota State Senate in 2000 where she advocated for the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. Before that, she spent five years as a federal tax litigation attorney, working on both civil and criminal cases. Bachmann grew up in the Midwest and met her husband, Marcus, while they were working on the 1976 presidential campaign of Jimmy Carter.
Her first visit to Washington, D.C., she said, was to dance at Carter’s inaugural ball. She said she became a Republican after reading the Gore Vidal novel “Burr,” which she said mocked the nation’s founding fathers. Bachmann is a graduate of Winona State University in Minnesota.
She received her J.D. at the O.W. Coburn School of Law at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa and an L.L.M. in Tax Law at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.
She has been married for more than thirty years and lives in Stillwater, where she and her husband own a small business mental health care practice that employs nearly 50 people. Bachmann has five children. In addition, the Bachmann family has cared for 23 foster children.
Michele Bachmann News
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The entire New Hampshire salaried staff of Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has quit, according to a local television station, undercutting her candidacy in the state that traditionally conducts the nation’s first primary.
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Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said voters shouldn’t “settle” for a president who doesn’t share their values, spotlighting one of her campaign themes in a speech today at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
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Bioethicist Art Caplan said his challenge to Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann for evidence that a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer caused mental retardation ended without Bachmann acknowledging it.
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Bachmann’s reliance on small donors has been a hallmark of her House career, and it’s an asset that can provide dividends in a Republican presidential primary where her strongest competitors are vying for a smaller pool of big donors to generate cash for their campaigns.
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Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said President Barack Obama has skirted the U.S. Constitution on several fronts, as she and rivals in the race to challenge him next year courted support from Tea Party activists at a forum yesterday in South Carolina.
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Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, a critic of federal spending, received between $5,000 and $15,000 in income last year from a family farm that has received more than $250,000 in federal subsidies, according to her most recent House financial-disclosure form.
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Republican presidential candidate and Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann said her win in the Iowa Straw Poll yesterday is a sign of voter discontent with President Barack Obama and his handling of the economy.
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Supporters of Representative Michele Bachmann have set up a political action committee to take unlimited corporate, union and individual donations in support of her presidential campaign.
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U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann said she would reduce Medicare and Social Security benefits for all but current recipients as part of an effort to reduce the federal deficit.
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Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said she has “no doubt” the U.S. will maintain its top credit rating, even as she reiterated her opposition to any increase in the country’s debt ceiling.
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Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman whose attacks on President Barack Obama made her a favorite of Tea Party activists, officially entered the 2012 Republican presidential contest today in a state critical to her odds for success.
Opinion by Bloomberg View
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The questions about Michele Bachmann abound: Is she merely a pale copy of Sarah Palin? Is she smart? Are her views extreme? The answers are easy: No, yes and yes.
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Michele Bachmann won the greatest victory of her political career the same day much of the rationale for her candidacy evaporated.
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Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman and Republican candidate for president, is making a muscular showing in the polls. She is telegenic. She is clever. Some of her Republican opponents worry she may be unstoppable.
Presidential Campaign News
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Herman Cain denied detailed claims of inappropriate sexual behavior made by a fourth woman yesterday, as the Republican presidential candidate seeks to control the scandal threatening to derail his campaign.
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As Mitt Romney arrived for a campaign stop yesterday in Dubuque, Iowa, awaiting him was a large sheet of steel cut into the shape of Iowa. At the sheet’s center, workers at the metal fabrication shop had also carved the Republican presidential candidate’s name.
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After efforts across the U.S. this year to rein in government-worker unions, Ohioans today will decide whether Governor John Kasich and Republican lawmakers went too far.
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Holly Schean didn’t know what was on the other side of the hill near her parents’ home in Kingston, Tennessee. At 1 a.m. on Dec. 22, 2008, she found out. The earth split and toxic coal ash surged across a finger of the Emory River.
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Updated 57 minutes ago
Texas Governor Rick Perry is calling on the U.S. government to stop “picking winners and losers” among energy companies and has pledged to end federal subsidies to the industry. Under his plan, alternative energy businesses would likely lose a lot more than would fossil-fuel producers.
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Herman Cain raised $1.6 million in the five days after sexual harassment allegations surfaced on Oct. 30, showing claims about his conduct as head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s aren’t slowing momentum for his presidential bid, his campaign said.
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From alternative fuels to clean air, President Barack Obama’s record is a disappointment to environmentalists, who helped get him elected and now are threatening to sit out his re-election bid in 2012.
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Reince Priebus, the 39-year-old chairman of the Republican Party, who has become good at handling press queries, got that deer-in-the-headlights look a week ago when I asked him a simple question.
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A woman who accused Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain of sexual harassment complained about a “series of inappropriate behaviors” and “unwanted advances,” her lawyer said yesterday.
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Herman Cain and Mitt Romney, leading in polling of the Republican presidential race in Iowa, passed up a closely watched annual party fundraising dinner in the state where caucuses start the nominating process in less than two months.
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