Bachmann, Michele, 1956-

Michele Marie Bachmann (née Amble; born April 6, 1956) is an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Republican Party, she was the U.S. Representative for Minnesota's 6th congressional district from 2007 until 2015 and a candidate for President of the United States in the 2012 election.

Born in Waterloo, Iowa, her family moved from Iowa to Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, when she was 13 years old. She graduated from Anoka High School in 1974 before receiving a BA in political science and English from Winona State University in Winona, Minnesota, in 1978, the year she married Marcus Bachmann, a clinical therapist. BNachmann went on to study law at the Coburn School of Law at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, receiving a JD in 1986. Two years later, she completed a master’s of law in taxation at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. She worked for four years as a lawyer for the Internal Revenue Service’s Office of Chief Counsel, in St. Paul, Minnesota, but left the position after the birth of her second child in 1992.

Bachmann’s political career stemmed from her interest in education reform. When she enrolled one of her children at a charter school, she took a position on the school’s board and collaborated with other like-minded parents and school administrators to emphasize the role of Christianity in American life throughout the curriculum. In December 1993, Bachmann resigned from the board after the state threatened to revoke the school’s charter. After an unsuccessful run for the Stillwater area school board in 1999, Bachmann defeated a longtime moderate incumbent for a state senate seat in 2000, where she became a vocal critic of a Minnesota law that set state education standards and a federal education law encouraging vocational training programs at public high schools and urged the legislature to approve a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, limit access to abortions, and cut taxes. Touting her Christian beliefs and support for the economic and foreign policy agenda of the George W. Bush administration, Bachmann was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006.

During her time in the House, Bachmann criticized the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the George W. Bush-era rescue package Congress approved in the fall of 2008 to prevent the collapse of investment banking corporations, advocated for the privatization of Social Security and tax reform, focusing on ending the estate tax and making President Bush’s tax cuts permanent. After the 2008 election of Barack Obama, Bachmann’s legislative activity mainly consisted of proposals designed to counteract the efforts of the Obama administration. In 2013 her bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act passed the House. She also called for a constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage. This strategy contributed to Bachmann’s rapid ascent into the national spotlight, which coincided with the emergence of the Tea Party. She praised the populist, anti-government movement for its principles of “fiscal responsibility and limited government,” and founded the Tea Party Caucus in Congress in 2010. In 2011, she declared her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Though briefly a frontrunner, Bachmann ultimately finished sixth in the Iowa caucus and withdrew from the race in January 2012. After a narrow re-election to her House seat in 2012, Bachmann opted to retire from the House in 2014.