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Contributors in Minnesota: Jennifer Brooks, Baird Helgeson, Patricia Lopez, Jim Ragsdale, Rachel E. Stassen-Berger and Glen Stubbe. Contributors in D.C.: Kevin Diaz and Corey Mitchell.
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Michele Bachmann says she will not run for re-election
Posted by: Rachel E. Stassen-Berger Updated: May 29, 2013 - 11:02 AM
updated
By Rachel E. Stassen-Berger and Corey Mitchell
With an early morning video message to supporters, embattled Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann announced she would not run for re-election next year.
"My dear friends, after a great deal of thought and deliberation, I have decided next year that I will not seek a fifth congressional term to represent the wonderful people of the Sixth District of Minnesota," Bachmann said in the Wednesday morning video. "I've never considered holding public office to be an occupation."
The high-profile congresswoman had a narrow re-election last year and is under federal investigation for her 2012 presidential campaign. A recent poll found that a rematch with her 2012 Democratic challenger, Jim Graves, was a dead heat.
In a polished video message, which included her personal list of what she believes she accomplished during her eight years in Washington, she said supporters could "rest assured" that neither of those challenges influenced her decisions
Graves said that Bachmann's decision shows she "recognized that it would be an uphill battle for her going forward." People in the district, said the millionaire hotelier, are "eager to be represented by a common-sense business person."
Although Bachmann's district is the most Republican in the state, she only bested Graves by about 1 percentage point, or about 4,200 votes, in 2012. In November, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won 56.5 of the vote in the district.
"My decision was not in any way influenced by any concerns about my being re-elected to Congress," Bachmann said in her video message. "If I ran I would again defeat the individual who I defeated last year."
When she ran last year, she battled a perception that her 2012 presidential ran meant that she took her eyes off the needs of the district. In that race, she won the Ames Iowa straw poll in 2011, which felled Gov. Tim Pawlenty's candidacy, and then dropped out six months later when she came in a disappointing sixth place.
The campaign left with more than a $1 million in debt, much of which she has since repaid through the congressional campaign she restarted in February of last year. All told, she spent nearly $15 million on last year's 2012 congressional bid, making that race one of the most expensive in the country.
The presidential campaign also left Bachmann in the ongoing glare of Iowa and federal investigators and in the middle of a civil lawsuit.
The FBI has contacted two former staffers of her presidential campaign, adding to the swirl of federal and state investigations looking into alleged financial improprieties by top officials in the campaign. The Federal Election Commission and the Office of Congressional Ethics are also looking into her campaign's activities and the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee has investigated payments to her 2012 Iowa campaign chairman, state Sen. Kent Sorenson.
On Wednesday, Bachmann, who ran paid television ads two weeks ago, shocked the political world with her announcement. Even Republicans insiders in the district were surprised to wake up and find the news.
Bachmann herself was out of the country as the Sixth District absorbed her bombshell. She was on a congressional trip to Russia on Wednesday, leaving her eight-minute video statement to speak for her.
"Looking forward, after the completion of my term, my future is full, it is limitless and my passions for America will remain," Bachmann said. She said she would consider any future path, "if it can help save and protect our great nation for future generations."
Bachmann's announcement instantly set off a political scramble in the Republican-leaning Sixth Congressional District. Many Republican office-holders and former office-holders had interest in the suburban and rural district last year, after Bachmann's failed presidential campaign before she decided to run for re-election, and may look to run in 2014.
See a photo gallery of Bachmann's years in Congress here.
Forget the forecast scramble
Posted by: Rachel E. Stassen-Berger Updated: November 30, 2012 - 12:06 PMTwice a year for more than a decade, Minnesota’s finance gurus set a date to brief the governor, lawmakers and reporters on the biannual budget forecast.
And twice a year for more than a decade, reporters have wheedled the forecast number out of officials hours before they are supposed to know the number.
No more.
Starting with Wednesday’s forecast, state financial officials will release the number to the media as they are briefing lawmakers. They’ll make the number public, with some context, so the initial reports will be more complete and reporters (and their lawmaker sources) won’t have to scramble.
John Pollard, spokesman for Minnesota Management and Budget, said financial officials realized: “The current system just needs to be updated. We’ve been doing the same thing for the last ten or 15 years and things changed…The fact of the matter is news moves faster than it did.”
This post first appeared in our Morning Hot Dish political newsletter. If you're not already getting the political newsletter by email, it's easy and free to sign up. Go toStarTribune.com/membercenter, check the Politics newsletter box and save the change.
Ten years ago today
Posted by: Jim Ragsdale Updated: October 25, 2012 - 10:34 AMRumors at first, then a great silence from normally gabby political insiders, and finally, the news – that U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, his wife and daughter, three aides and two pilots were dead in a plane crash near the Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport.
Shock, along with flowery memorials and crepe hung on green Wellstone signs, shared the emotional space with what-next prognostication. The state faced an exhausting cycle of mourning and campaigning, when separating the two was impossible and remembrance was crowded out by the election calendar.
Today we pause, during the frenetic last days of another election campaign, to honor the memory of those who died: Sen. Paul Wellstone, his wife Sheila Wellstone, their daughter Marcia Wellstone Markuson, staffers Tom Lapic, Mary McEvoy and Will McLaughlin, and pilots Richard Conry and Michael Guess.
From Morning Hot Dish: Million-dollar quarter for Graves
Posted by: Rachel E. Stassen-Berger Updated: October 16, 2012 - 9:32 AMBy Jennifer Brooks
Democrat Jim Graves raised $1 million in the third quarter for his effort to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, his campaign reports.
That total is more than double the three-month hauls of most other candidates in the state’s most competitive congressional races.
But Graves is challenging one of the House’s most prolific fundraisers; Bachmann reports she raised $4.3 million in the same three-month period.
Graves, a millionaire hotelier, donated $270,000 of his own money to the campaign, but also received more than 12,000 individual donations.
This post first appeared in our Morning Hot Dish political newsletter. f you're not already getting the political newsletter by email, it's easy and free to sign up. Go toStarTribune.com/membercenter, check the Politics newsletter box and save the change.
Bachmann event on Wednesday
Posted by: Paul Walsh Updated: October 9, 2012 - 8:45 AMCorrection: Because of an editing error, the Morning Hot Dish newsletter incorrectly listed the day that U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann is speaking at the Minnesota Republican Party's Elephant Club luncheon.
The event is Wednesday, Oct. 10. The luncheon is at the Hilton Minneapolis, from noon to 1 p.m.
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