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When Michele Bachmann dropped out of the Republican presidential race Wednesday, she was making just the first of a series of important political decisions she’ll face in 2012. Next on the list: whether she will run for re-election to the U.S. House.
Alice Stewart, Bachmann’s presidential campaign spokesman, said Bachmann’s only decision in the short-term was about leaving the presidential race and that discussions about her future in Congress would have to come later.
“This was an emotional decision, this was tough … this is all-consuming since the results came in,” she said. “She’s going to take a little time off and then decide what’s next.”
Bachmann’s not likely to make that decision any time soon. A court panel still needs to draw the state’s congressional district lines and the various plans it is considering have vastly different implications for Bachmann’s 6th District — one would move her hometown of Stillwater into Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum’s territory.
National strategists from the campaigning arms of both the Democratic and Republican Parties said it’s hard to judge the viability of Bachmann’s return to the House without knowing what the districts look like. But Democrats indicate the party would try to make her presidential bid an issue if she chooses to run again.
Minnesota DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin said his party relishes the the 2012 6th District race whether Bachmann runs or not. He expects a competitive race if Bachmann leaves Congress and there is an open seat, and said her presidential bid would be used against her if she runs again.
“She did everything she could to ingratiate herself to Iowa voters but did nothing” for her Minnesota constituents, he said.
GOP in the dark
Republicans, meanwhile, are just as in the dark about Bachmann’s future plans as everyone else, putting the odds at 50-50 that she runs for the House again. If she were to pass on a run, and the district’s boundaries don’t change too dramatically, they’ve got a list of potential Republicans who could step in to take her place (though no potential candidates have come out publicly, lest they risk facing Bachmann in a primary).
David FitzSimmons, the chairman of the 6th District GOP, said he imagines Bachmann will run for re-election to her House seat and successfully retain it. Her presidential bid, though unsuccessful, is unlikely to affect her political prospects in a House race.
“Any time you take a step up to a new political level it’s a lot more difficult,” he said.
But Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, questioned whether her poor performance would affect the way her congressional constituents view her if she lands on a Minnesota ballot again.
“It is never a good thing to crash and burn, and that’s what Bachmann has done in the presidential race,” he said. “If she’d done better, there might have been home district pride, but the opposite effect is probably taking hold.”
Her poor Iowa showing indicates she’d find it more difficult to run a race outside the friendly confines of the Sixth District, including possible Senate match-ups against either Amy Klobuchar this year or Al Franken. Polling suggests Klobuchar would clobber Bachmann in a head-to-head race. It also indicates that Minnesota as a whole has a highly unfavorable view of Bachmann, making her an unlikely Republican challenger to Franken in 2014.
“She’s very controversial, and other Republicans would make much stronger nominees when, say, Al Franken comes up in 2014,” Sabato said.
FitzSimmons disagrees, pointing to the tight state-wide races of the last two election cycles.
“Any party has a chance of winning any statewide race,” he said.
Another option
Bachmann, of course, could choose not to run for any election in Minnesota again.
Failed national candidates often take up a movement or occupation that can keep in the hot glow of the national spotlight for as long as possible. On Wednesday, for example, Herman Cain announced that he would go on a national tour promoting his 9-9-9 tax plan, which became a sensation during his presidential run. Sarah Palin became an author and a Fox News contributor, and her flirtation with a presidential run was a national story last fall. Mike Huckabee won the 2012 Iowa caucuses and now hosts a show on the network.
Stewart said on Wednesday that Bachmann has yet to consider moving into any such career.
“Time will tell,” she said. “It’s news to me.”
Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry
I’ve gotta say this is starting to look like an addiction. Neither Bachmann or her campaign were ever truly relevant. She hasn’t talked to anyone in over two days, her campaign has folded like tent in a blizzard, and she would never have gotten more than 5% of a vote outside her weird Republican district in any event. She doesn’t even show up to vote anymore in the House. Yet, there no fewer than 4 headlines about her on the Minnpost home page.
I have had a Perry-like epiphany in the past 24 hours.
(1) M. Bachmann has embedded herself in our society like an antibiotic-resistant infection. The obsession (some might say horrified fascination) with her continues apace.
(2) Even an egocentric crusader needs a breather sometimes.
(3) I predict she will take that break. Work on convincing her supporters (past and present) that she really, really loves Minnesota after all, and that her heart belongs to us. Hard to say what one does with Bachmann heart, but there you have it.
(4) She needs to assess where the multiple landmines lie and how to defuse them. Also where the CD6 boundaries will shake out.
(5) She cannot beat McCollum. She cannot beat Klobuchar. She thinks she can beat Franken, because that’s how she rolls. But Al has grown in wisdom and stature, and doggone it, people like him.
(6) She needs to tote up how many corporations (umm, people….I meant people) will pony up big bucks for her next grand political adventure. I suspect she make have work out her welcome, but people (umm, I mean corporations) are predictably unpredictable.
(7) In light of all of the above, she will do the lecture/book circuit for the next year or so, honing her “Obama is evil” rhetoric, and pretending that anything other than wicked gays and precious fetuses matter at all. “She” will write another book.
(8) She will run again because perceived political power is addictive. That is, unless she becomes a patient at the Marcus Bachmann clinic and prays it away. More tedious work for her creator.
Like Palin, I doubt that she would take the pay cut that would result from being elected to a public office.
She’ll make more money on the ‘lecture’ circuit peddling herself and her book.
Paul Udstrand nailed it.
The Star Tribune is totally obsessed with her too. Last night’s headline was “Bachmann’s future plans a mystery” or similar. If the plans are a mystery, there’s no story. If there’s no story, there shouldn’t be an article.
I fully expect her to take a lucrative Fox News job where she can get paid to make things up.
Bachmann won’t be able to run for office in Minnesota again. Out of desperation for votes she declared she is an Iowan. Iowans shouldn’t have anything to do with Minnesota politics. It is our gain and Iowas loss. Words have consequences and these are Bachmann’s undeniable words. Good luck Iowa.
“M. Bachmann has embedded herself in our society like an antibiotic-resistant infection.”
Yes, I suppose that’s one way to look at it. Another might be that she’s an innoculation that protects society against outbreaks of leftist infection.
I don’t know if Rep. Bachmann will choose to run for CD6 again, but really, you’re kidding yourselves if you think she won’t keep that seat for as long as she wants it.
I do find it kind of ironic that Betty McCollum, a cardboard cutout who has in 12 years managed to pass 1 inconsequential piece of legislation finds herself pitted against a firecracker like Bachmann.
Thomas, was that metaphor meant to be ironic? It would seem that the Bachmann-innoculation has the same effect on American political discourse as Bachmann believes real vaccinations have on patients.
@6, I suppose that would depend on what CD6 might look like in the every near future.
Bachmann is addicted to attention. She’s well aware of her parallels with Palin, and is smart enough to avoid the trap of obvious self-gratification that led to Palin’s political demise.
She’s had a thorough exposure to the benefits of wealth. She also needs – and feeds on – adulation. I’ll bet she heads into the overtly religious side. This will fit very neatly with her insistence that a theocracy is right, just, and inevitable.
Mac Hammond, pastor of that mega- “prosperity gospel” church alongside, if not in, her 6th District, should be ready to retire. Given the right terms, the Bachmanns could buy him out.
This would give them the money, the platform, and the possible future springboard to fit in with their needs for relevance, income, and continued support from their fundamentalist base.
As with Newt Gingrich, it’s not so much the actuality as it is the threat of holding future office that feeds our fascination.
#2, Barbara, fantastic. Antibiotic resistant indeed. Its seems the more irrelevant she becomes the more desperate the media are to keep her in the news. One thing however, a number of people keep suggesting that she’ll have some kind of career at a commentator or author. Her book was unmitigated flop. Her confrontations with children and other made the rounds on YouTube but if you look at those you’ll notice that there if virtually no crowd. I don’t think she’s got what it takes to be a successful female Republican commentator, she’s too obnoxious, and nowhere near clever enough.
MB’s supporters don’t give a rats ass what Team Obama media jackals think about MB’s chances or what advice MB should take. Her supporters will easily re-elected her in MN if she cares to run again.
She stated clearly that she would not run for her house seat if her campaign failed, but being who she is, that statement means nothing. Thankfully, her campaign is nothing now too. Her presence on the scene was, at best, a bit of comedy. In reality, it is a demonstration of one persons love of attention presented as “public serevice.” Her goal, in her own mind, was the sort of dictatorial power that only God’s representatives have the right to exercise, for the good of all. And this is the crux of what is wrong with her and all the other neo-con conservatives: they want to insert their moral facade into my life, which is the antithesis of the “freedom” they claim to champion. Goodbye Mikki, too bad you were ever around, wasting good oxygen.
In 2011, Minnesotans paid not only Bachmann’s $174,000 salary, but also $629,532 for her “staff salaries.” In return for this, she skipped more votes in Congress than she cast. How would you, as an employer, feel about an employee with that kind of record? And is there any conceivable reason why we should hire her again in November? (Well, apart from whatever cachet we may glean from having a national embarrassment ‘represent’ us.)