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Michele Bachmann biography

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Quick Facts

  • NAME: Michele Marie Bachmann
  • OCCUPATION: U.S. Representative
  • BIRTH DATE: April 06, 1956 (Age: 55)
  • EDUCATION: Winona State College, William Mitchell School of Law, Oral Roberts University Law School, William & Mary Law School
  • PLACE OF BIRTH: Waterloo, Iowa
more about Michele

Best Known For

Michele Bachmann is a congresswoman best known for her conservative Tea Party politics, and her candidacy for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Synopsis

Born in Waterloo, Iowa, Michele Bachmann became a born-again Christian at the age of 16. After earning a law degree, Bachmann became a local conservative activist, protesting abortion clinics and state-mandated educational standards. In 2000 she was elected to the Minnesota state Senate, and earned a repuation for her conservatism— and her hyperbolic style. In 2006 Bachmann was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Bachmann helped found the conservative Tea Party Caucus,

Contents

Quotes

I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of people in Congress and find out are they pro-America, or anti-America. I think people would love to see an expose like that.
– Michele Bachmann

and became one of President Obama's most outspoken critics. A rising star in the GOP, in June 2011 Bachmann announced her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination.

Profile

Politician. Born as Michele Marie Amble on April 6, 1956 in Waterloo, Iowa, Michele Bachmann burst onto the national political scene in her fifties as one of the most forceful conservative voices of the Tea Party era. Her contemporary status as a hero to conservatives and scourge to liberals seems a long way removed from her rather ordinary Midwestern roots. Bachmann's family moved from Iowa to Minnesota when she was young, eventually settling in Anoka, where her parents divorced in 1970. Despite this family trauma, Michele remained a bright and popular straight-A student and cheerleader, winning the title of Miss Congeniality in the Miss Anoka competition. After becoming a born-again Christian at the age of 16, Bachmann took a great interest in the Holy Land, spending a summer working on Kibbutz Be'eri near Beer Sheva, Israel, in 1974.

She then matriculated at Winona State College, a medium-sized public school in southeastern Minnesota, where she met her future husband, Marcus Bachmann. She married him shortly after graduation, then took a year off to enjoy married life before starting pursuit of a law degree at the William Mitchell School of Law in St. Paul. Bachmann eventually received her J.D. from Oral Roberts Law and an LL.M. degree from William & Mary Law School, and later worked for five years as an attorney for the United States Internal Revenue Service.

Though she volunteered for Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter's successful presidential campaign in 1976, Bachmann decided she was a Republican after reading the liberal writer Gore Vidal's novel Burr: "He was kind of mocking the Founding Fathers and I just thought, 'What a snot,' 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."

After moving the family back to Stillwater, Minnesota, Marcus Bachmann started a Christian counseling practice. Michele Bachmann, no longer working for the IRS, became a full-time mother to her five children while also caring for a number of foster children. Meanwhile, she began to get involved in local politics, at first mostly as a hobby: "I didn't consider myself overtly political," she later recalled. "I certainly didn't think of it as something that I would do as an occupation." She began her

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