Michele Bachmann biography

Unexpectedly, Bachmann soon found herself ranked among the rising stars of the local Republican Party. A fiery speech at the 2000 Minnesota Republican Convention won Bachmann the GOP nomination for a seat in the state senate; that November, at the age of 44, Bachmann won her first elective office.

Michele Bachmann quickly became one of the most conservative members of the Minnesota Senate,

first gaining statewide notoriety in 2003 by proposing a constitutional amendment banning the state from legally recognizing gay marriage. Though Bachmann failed to get that measure onto the ballot, she established herself as a force to be reckoned with on the Republican right.

In 2006, Bachmann set her sights on a bigger prize: a seat in the United States House of Representatives, which was left open when incumbent Republican Rep. Mark Kennedy unsuccessfully ran for United States Senate. Boosted in her fundraising by the support of national evangelical groups and the National Republican Congressional Committee, Bachmann easily won the seat in a three-way race, claiming 50 percent of the vote and becoming one of the few Republican freshmen in the 110th Congress, following a 2006 election cycle dominated by Democrats nationwide. When she was sworn into office in January 2007, Bachmann became the first Republican woman ever to represent Minnesota in Congress.

Well-known for both her strong fiscal and social conservatism, and for her tendency to engage in hyperbolic rhetoric, Bachmann quickly became a prominent and polarizing national political figure. During the hotly contested presidential campaign of 2008, Bachmann declared on national television that Democratic candidate Barack Obama held "anti-American views" and seemed to suggest that such views were widespread among Democrats in Congress and ought to be investigated. "I wish the American media would take a great look," she said, " 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 exposé like that." Liberals and Democrats decried what they saw as an implicit McCarthyism in Bachmann's statements, but her harsh words won her more fervent support on the right. Once Obama took office in 2009, Bachmann became one of his most outspoken opponents in Congress.

2012 GOP Race

In 2010, long since having become a darling of the GOP's conservative base, Bachmann originated the Tea Party Caucus in Congress. While she was passed over that year in her bid for a position in the Republican congressional leadership, she maintained her status as a popular national leader on the American right, and prepared for a potential presidential run in 2012. "I think what this has changed is the grass roots, and what they're looking for. Our phones have been ringing off the hook, our Facebook has been lit up, our donations are pouring in. And people are saying, 'Michele, jump in, we want you to run.'"

In June 2011, Bachmann officially announced her candidacy for the Republican nomination for the presidency in Waterloo, Iowa—the town of her birth, which happens to be located in the crucial early caucus state.