Michele Bachmann
Michele Marie Bachmann is an American politician who was the U.S. representative for from 2007 until 2015. A member of the Republican Party, she was a candidate for president of the United States in the 2012 election, but dropped out after the Iowa caucuses.
Born in Waterloo, Iowa, Bachmann moved to Brooklyn Park, Minnesota as a teenager. She earned a bachelor's degree from Winona State University, a Juris Doctor from Oral Roberts University's O. W. Coburn School of Law, and a Master of Laws from William & Mary Law School. She briefly worked in tax law for the Internal Revenue Service before becoming a stay-at-home mother. She became involved in local politics, focusing on education issues.
Bachmann formally entered politics when she was elected to the Minnesota Senate in 2000. In 2006, she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. After her unsuccessful run for president, Bachmann was elected to another term in the House in 2012. She announced her retirement before the 2014 election.
Since January 1, 2021, Bachmann has been dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University.
Early life, education, and early career
Bachmann was born Michele Marie Amble on April 6, 1956, in Waterloo, Iowa, to Norwegian-American parents David John Amble, an engineer, and Arlene Jean Amble. Two of her great-great-great-grandparents, Melchior and Martha Munson, emigrated from Sogndal, Norway, to Wisconsin in 1857. Her family moved from Iowa to Brooklyn Park, Minnesota when she was 13 years old. After her parents divorced when she was 14, David moved to California and remarried. Bachmann was raised by her mother, who worked at the First National Bank in Anoka, Minnesota, where they moved again. Three years later her mother married widower Raymond J. LaFave; the new marriage resulted in a family with nine children.In Anoka High School, Bachmann was a cheerleader. She graduated from high school in 1974 and, after graduation, spent one summer working at kibbutz Be'eri in Israel with Young Life, an evangelical youth organization. In 1978, she graduated from Winona State University with a B.A. In 1979, Bachmann was a member of the first class of the O. W. Coburn School of Law, then a part of Oral Roberts University. There she studied with John Eidsmoe, whom she described in 2011 as "one of the professors who had a great influence on me". Bachmann worked as a research assistant on Eidsmoe's 1987 book Christianity and the Constitution, which argues that the United States was founded as a Christian theocracy and should become one again. In 1986, she received a J.D. degree from Oral Roberts University.
A member of ORU's final graduating class, she was also part of a group of faculty, staff, and students who moved ORU's library to what is now Regent University. In 1988, she received an LL.M. degree in tax law from William & Mary Law School. From 1988 to 1993, she worked as a tax litigation attorney for the Internal Revenue Service. However, she never took the bar examination or obtained a license to become a private attorney. Bachmann left the IRS to become a full-time mother when her fourth child was born.
Early political career
Activism
She grew up in a Democratic family and has said she became a Republican during her senior year at Winona State University. She told the Star Tribune that she was reading Gore Vidal's 1973 novel Burr and that Vidal "was kind of mocking the Founding Fathers and I just thought—I just remember reading the book, putting it in my lap, looking out the window and thinking, 'You know what? I don't think I am a Democrat. I must be a Republican. While still a registered Democrat, she and her then-fiancé, Marcus, were motivated to join the anti-abortion movement after watching Francis Schaeffer's 1976 Christian documentary film How Should We Then Live?. They prayed outside clinics and engaged in sidewalk counseling, an activity in which anti-abortion activists attempt to persuade women entering clinics not to get abortions. She has since made statements supportive of sidewalk counseling. Bachmann supported Jimmy Carter for president in 1976, and together with her husband, Bachmann worked on Carter's campaign. During Carter's presidency, she became disappointed with his approach to public policy, support for legalized abortion, and economic decisions she held responsible for increased gas prices. In the 1980 presidential election, she voted for Ronald Reagan and worked for his campaign.Bachmann's political activism gained media attention at an anti-abortion protest in 1991. She and approximately 30 other protesters went to a Ramsey County Board meeting where $3 million was to be appropriated to build a morgue for the county at St. Paul-Ramsey Medical Center, now known as Regions Hospital. The Medical Center performed abortions and employed pro-choice activist Jane Hodgson. Bachmann voiced her opposition to tax dollars going to the hospital; to the Star Tribune, she said, "in effect, since 1973, I have been a landlord of an abortion clinic, and I don't like that distinction". In 1993, she and six other co-founders started the K–12 New Heights Charter School in Stillwater. The publicly funded school's charter mandated that it be non-sectarian in all programs and practices, but the school soon developed a strong Christian orientation. Parents of students at the school complained and the superintendent of schools warned her that the school was in violation of state law. Six months after the school's founding, she resigned and the Christian orientation was removed from the curriculum, allowing the school to keep its charter. She then began speaking against a state-mandated set of educational standards, including her opposition to School-to-Work policies, which propelled her into politics. In November 1999, she and four other Republicans were candidates in an election for the school board of Stillwater; they were not elected.
Minnesota Senate
Before launching her career for the Minnesota Senate, Bachmann was encouraged to run by her family and local conservative organizations. Bachmann became a Minnesota state senator after defeating incumbent Gary Laidig in district 56 in 2000. After redistricting due to the 2000 Census, she defeated Jane Krentz, a Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party incumbent, in district 52.During her career as state senator, she was known for her conservatism, particularly due to her opposition to abortion and gay marriage. Star Tribune has described her as one of the Senate's most conservative members during her tenure. She also authored a Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Bachmann and Mary Liz Holberg, a Minnesota Representative, proposed a constitutional amendment that would bar the state from legally recognizing same-sex marriage in November 2003. On the day of introducing the amendments, Bachmann's lesbian stepsister came to the legislature building to listen to a hearing about the amendment. She reintroduced the proposal in 2005; it failed when it stalled indefinitely in the Minnesota Senate Judiciary committee. She served as assistant minority leader in charge of policy of the Senate Republican Caucus from November 2004 to July 2005, when the Republican Caucus removed her from the position. She claimed that disagreements with Dick Day, the Republican Senate minority leader, over her anti-tax stance caused her ouster.
U.S. House of Representatives
From 2007 to 2015, Bachmann represented, which included the northernmost and eastern suburbs of the Twin Cities and St. Cloud. She became the first Republican woman from Minnesota to be elected to the House of Representatives.110th Congress
Foreign affairs
Bachmann voted "No" on a January 2007 resolution in the House of Representatives opposing President George W. Bush's plan to increase troop levels in Iraq, but called for a full hearing in advance of the troop surge, saying, "the American people deserve to hear and understand the merits of increasing U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Increased troop presence is justifiable if that measure would bring a swift conclusion to a difficult conflict." She hesitated to give a firm endorsement, calling the hearings "a good first step in explaining to the American people the course toward victory in Iraq." Later that year, she went to Iraq, where she said she was convinced that "the war effort is heading in the right direction."Higher education
On July 11, 2007, Bachmann voted against the College Cost Reduction and Access Act. The act raised the maximum Pell grant from $4,310 to $5,200, lowered interest rates on subsidized student loans from 6.8% to 3.4%, raised loan limits from $7,500 to $30,500, disfavored married students who filed joint tax returns, provided more favorable repayment terms to students who could not use their education to prosper financially, and favored public sector over private sector workers with much more favorable loan forgiveness benefits. Supporters of the bill said it would allow more students to attend college and prosper for the rest of their lives.Bachmann said she opposed the act because "it fails students and taxpayers with gimmicks, hidden costs and poorly targeted aid. It contains no serious reform of existing programs, and it favors the costly, government-run direct lending program over nonprofit and commercial lenders." The bill passed the House and was signed by President Bush.
Energy and environment
During the summer of 2008, as national gasoline prices rose to over $4 a gallon, Bachmann became a leading Congressional advocate for increased domestic oil and natural gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf. She joined ten other House Republicans and members of the media on a Congressional Energy Tour to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, and to Alaska. The trip was arranged by Arctic Power, an Alaskan lobbying group that advocates for ANWR development. Its purpose was to receive a firsthand account of emerging renewable energy technologies and the prospects of increased domestic oil and natural gas production in Alaska, including ANWR.Bachmann rejects the idea that climate change is real, progressing, and primarily caused by humans. She has claimed that global warming is "all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax" and has been called "one of the GOP's loudest global warming skeptics." She has claimed, baselessly, that "because life requires carbon dioxide and it is part of the planet's life cycle, it cannot be harmful." On the House floor on Earth Day 2009, Bachmann said she opposed cap and trade climate legislation, again making disproven claims that "carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas, it is a harmless gas. Carbon dioxide is natural; it is not harmful ... We're being told we have to reduce this natural substance to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is naturally occurring in the earth."
In March 2008 Bachmann introduced H.R. 849, the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act. The bill would have repealed two sections of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 signed into law by George W. Bush. The 2007 Energy Act mandates energy efficiency and labeling standards for incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. Bachmann's bill would have required the Government Accountability Office to show that a change to fluorescent bulbs would have "clear economic, health and environmental benefits" before enforcing lighting efficiency regulations. The bill would have allowed these standards to remain in place if the comptroller general found they would lead to consumer savings, reduce carbon-dioxide emissions and pose no health risks to consumers. The bill languished in the House and became inactive at the end of the 110th Congress. Bachmann reintroduced the bill in March 2011.