thenewstribune.com
DAVID GOLDSTEIN
McClatchy Newspapers
Updated: 12/31/11 4:10 am

WASHINGTON — Michele Bachmann was an “accidental politician,” and it all began on April Fool’s Day. On April 1, 2000, the 2012 Republican White House hopeful — then a “middle American mom,” as she wrote in her recent memoir — made a fateful, spur-of-the moment decision that changed her life.

She decided not to attend a wedding with her family and instead joined fellow Minnesota activists at a local Republican Party nominating convention. They wanted to put up someone to challenge their state senator, a veteran Republican lawmaker who they thought was turning soft and needed the fear of God put into him.

Bachmann became the sacrificial lamb. To everyone’s amazement, she knocked him off and went on to win the seat. That was her first political lesson, Bachmann, now a three-term congresswoman from suburban Minneapolis, said in her book, “Core of Conviction.”

“With the right kind of popular energy, ordinary people can make a difference,” she wrote. “You can fight city hall ... you can take on the establishment and win.”

Now her presidential hopes appear similarly challenging: She’s fallen from the top of the Republican field over the summer to the second tier as voting looms next month.

The 55-year-old political dynamo boasts of her “titanium spine.” She’s rarely demurred from taking on the establishment, even her own party when she’s deemed it not confrontational enough or committed enough to core conservative dogma.

When the House GOP leadership backed the debt-ceiling deal with the White House last summer and pressured its caucus to fall in line, Bachmann was a no-show.

Named Miss Congeniality in high school, Bachmann lobs political grenades like a commando in pearls. She recently called some of the other Republicans in the presidential race “milquetoast opponents.” She doesn’t blink an eye when she says she’d deport all of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country — “in steps.”

Like Ben Franklin with his kite, Bachmann lofts a line into the ether and quickly draws electricity. Appearing on MSNBC’s “Hardball” in 2008, she said that President Barack Obama “may have anti-American views,” then suggested that the news media should investigate the views of members of Congress “and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America?”

Sometimes her aim goes awry, as when she said that if she were in the White House, “we wouldn’t have an American Embassy in Iran.” There is no U.S. Embassy in Iran; it’s been closed since the 1979 hostage crisis.

Her religious faith has been her guide, she says. It’s why she became a lawyer, entered politics and chose her crusades.Bachmann’s campaign didn’t respond to requests for an interview.

She grew up in Waterloo, Iowa. On the campaign trail, it’s her symbol of heartland values and a political touchstone.“I believe we need a lot more Waterloo rather than Washington in the White House,” she said at a book signing last month in her hometown.

Her parents, both Democrats, divorced after moving the family to Minnesota.Earlier this year, Bachmann told The Weekly Standard, a conservative political magazine, that she’d learned about poverty firsthand when her mother supported four children on her $4,800 annual salary as a bank teller.

Bachmann and her family reside in Stillwater, Minn. She and her husband, Marcus Bachmann, have raised five children and served as foster parents to 23 others.

Marcus Bachmann is a therapist who runs a Christian counseling center whose methods are rooted in faith.

Bachmann founded the House Tea Party Caucus last year, but she was unable to parlay that perch into a position in the House of Representatives leadership when the GOP took over last January.

The former federal tax attorney won the Iowa straw poll in August, the first test of candidate strength in the first state that will cast ballots in 2012, on Tuesday.

For Bachmann, the bad news is that the 22 percent support she attracted back in June has slipped to just 9 percent.

The good news is that’s where she was in October, as well, so she appears to have halted her slide.

“No candidate has so far gotten even one-third of electoral support in any poll,” said Mark Meckler, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, a large tea party group. “To me, that shows it’s anybody’s to win.”

Bachmann has gone after Newt Gingrich, accusing him of offering amnesty to illegal immigrants and being an “influence peddler” because of his private Washington consulting work.

Gingrich, in turn, has called Bachmann “factually challenged,” given her record of occasional gaffes.

She once said that an Obama trip to India would cost taxpayers $200 million a day, a figure the White House called “wildly inflated,” and that the pivotal American Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord — both in Massachusetts — were in New Hampshire.

Even so, it’s worth noting that at this point in the Republican presidential primary campaign four years ago, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was leading the field. His closest rival, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, was 11 points back and later dropped out of the race.

Born: 1956 in Waterloo, Iowa.Family: Married, five biological children, foster parent to 23 other children.

Education: B.A., Winona State University (197, J.D., Oral Roberts University (1986), L.L.M., College of William & Mary Law School (198.

EARLY CAREER1976: Works on Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign.1993: With other parents, starts a charter school in Stillwater, Minn.

1999: Unsuccessfully runs for the school board of Stillwater.

POLITICAL CAREER2000: Defeats 18-year incumbent Gary Laidig for the Republican nomination for Minn. state senator; wins general election.

2006: First Republican woman to be elected to the U.S. House from Minnesota.2008: Re-elected to House; raises more than $13 million for campaign.

2010: Hosts first tea party caucus meeting in House; seen as champion of tea party values (lower taxes, focus on Constitution and smaller government); re-elected to House again; spends more than $8.5 million defending her seat.

Sources: Reuters; michelebachmann.com

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