2006 New Member Profiles
Minnesota's 6th District: Michele Bachmann (R)
The Almanac of American Politics
© National Journal Group Inc.
| Michele Bachmann |
| Born: |
April 6, 1956 |
| Family: |
Husband, Marcus; five children |
| Religion: |
Lutheran |
| Education: |
Winona State University, B.A. 1978; Oral Roberts University, J.D. 1986; College of William and Mary, L.L.M. 1988 |
| Career: |
Lawyer |
Elected
Office: |
Minnesota Senate, 2000-06
|
In a contest that offered voters a stark choice between ideological opposites, state Sen.
Michele Bachmann defeated Democrat
Patty Wetterling to win the seat of GOP Rep.
Mark Kennedy, who ran for the Senate.
Bachmann, one of the state's leading fiscal and social conservatives, is a former Democrat who met her husband while working on Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign. She began her political career by losing a 1999 bid for the Stillwater school board. A year later, she ousted a moderate Republican state senator by winning the party's endorsement at the GOP convention and then defeating him in the primary.
In the Legislature, Bachmann sought to protect private-property rights, limit government spending, and cut taxes. She is a prominent abortion opponent, and she gained notoriety in 2004 for leading the Senate fight for a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. With her high-profile legislative work in representing a Senate district that covered about a quarter of the 6th District, Bachmann was well positioned to win this Republican-leaning seat. She was unopposed in the September 12 GOP primary.
Wetterling, however, had some advantages of her own. She became a nationally recognized advocate for missing children after her 11-year-old son Jacob was abducted in 1989; he has not been found. Wetterling was already familiar with the rigors of campaigning in the St. Cloud-based district, because she lost the 2004 race to Kennedy, 54 percent to 46 percent.
But Wetterling's support for abortion rights, her call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, and her opposition to a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage enabled Republicans to portray her as too liberal for this suburban and exurban seat. And compared with Bachmann, she struggled with her grasp of policy issues.
The race remained close through October, when the scandal surrounding former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., suddenly thrust Wetterling into the national spotlight. As revelations concerning Foley's sexually explicit e-mails to underage male congressional pages captured national headlines, Wetterling, with her background in child-safety advocacy, emerged as a top Democratic spokeswoman.
That late burst of attention might have doomed Bachmann were it not for her own record on the issue. In the state Senate, she had sponsored legislation to establish a task force on Internet crimes against juveniles. She was also a foster parent to 23 children, in addition to having five children of her own.
