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With an insider’s eye, Hot Dish tracks the tastiest bits of Minnesota’s political scene and keep you up-to-date on those elected to serve you.
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.
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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Posts about 6th District
Bachmann draws big names for Tea Party press conference
Posted by: Corey Mitchell Updated: May 16, 2013 - 12:41 PM
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah will join U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann this morning at a press conference on Capitol Hill to discuss the Internal Revenue Service targeting of tea party and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
Bachmann, chairwoman of the House Tea Party Caucus, has called the targeting "outrageous" and a "stunning abuse of power."
The tax scandal has served as a rallying point for the tea party, which began in 2009 as an anti-tax movement, but lost steam during the last election cycle. Tea party leaders from across the country and more than 20 Republican House members also plan to attend the event.
IRS leaders issued an apology last week for singling out organizations with the words "tea party" and "patriot" in their applications for extra scrutiny, stalling the approval process.
With political pressure mounting, President Obama announced Thursday that acting director Steven T. Miller will leave the tax agency next month.
The tax scandal has served as a rallying point for the tea party, which began in 2009 as an anti-tax moment, but lost steam during the last election cycle.
Bachmann goes up early on the airwaves this week
Posted by: Kevin Diaz Updated: May 15, 2013 - 7:37 PM
The ad campaign, first reported in the National Journal, begins Thursday, a full 18 months before voters go to the polls.
Records show that Bachmann’s campaign will run more than two dozen spots on KMSP, the local Fox affiliate, over the next two weeks. The $14,565 ad buy is part of a larger campaign that weighs in at closer to $85,000, according to Democratic sources.
A spokesman for Bachmann said he could not discuss the content of the ads.
The ads come as the Minnesota Republican is reportedly in settlement talks in connection with a politically-damaging lawsuit stemming from the alleged theft of a staffer’s email list by the Iowa chairman of Bachmann’s 2012 presidential campaign.
Bachmann also is scheduled to take part in a Capitol Hill press conference Thursday on IRS “intimidation” of Tea Party groups, an issue that could highlight her credentials as a Tea Party leader and former IRS attorney.
She also is sponsoring a new bill to repeal Obamacare, an issue that helped thrust her into a national spotlight three years ago. The repeal bill, which is scheduled for a House vote Thursday, represents the 37th time the GOP-led House has voted to defund all or part of the law.
Bachmann has been raising money at a furious pace in recent months, playing against her status as a top target for the House Majority PAC, the leading House Democratic super PAC. She faces a rematch next year with DFL businessman Jim Graves, who lost to her by little more than one percentage point in November.
Graves said he hadn't seen the ads, adding "candidly, I'm not very interested." His focus, he said, is employment and the business climate in the district.
Bachmann rails against Pentagon curbs on proselytization
Posted by: Kevin Diaz Updated: May 3, 2013 - 4:30 PM
Mikey Weinstein/AP photo
“What if our brave soldiers were told they couldn't practice their religion? That they were able to fight for OUR religious freedoms but they couldn't practice their own?” the Minnesota Republican wrote Friday in a fundraising pitch to supporters. “This may seem far-fetched, but unfortunately if some get their wish, it could soon become a reality.”
The campaign email, which asks supporters to sign a pledge, is based on a recent top-level Pentagon meeting with Mikey Weinstein, the founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
Bachmann, taking her lead from a chorus of conservative Christian groups that have raised the alarm about the meeting, referred to the group as “left-wing,” and “anti-Christian.”
The group, which says it has been inundated with a “non-stop torrent of shamefully ridiculously coverage,” says it is neither anti-Christian nor atheist.
Be that as it may, the contretemps have provided a rallying cry for opponents of newly-installed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, and an opportunity for Bachmann to return to her religious conservative roots.
Bachmann's House Tea Party Caucus is back
Posted by: Kevin Diaz Updated: April 25, 2013 - 11:51 AM
According to a report in Roll Call, about a dozen other representatives and senators are expected at the event, which signifies that the caucus intends to stay engaged in the new 113th Congress.
The Tea Party Caucus has not been much in evidence since last year, while Bachmann was defending her House seat in what turned out to be a surprisingly close challenge from DFL businessman Jim Graves.
Graves has announced another run at Bachmann next year, and there are already signs that it’s going to be a national rumpus. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which sat out last year’s race, pumped out a video this week chronicling the legal and ethical problems Bachmann faces from her 2012 presidential campaign.
Today, the liberal Super PAC CREDO announced that it is going to make Bachmann the first target of its 2014 campaign.
Affidavit says Bachmann approved hidden payments to Iowa senator
Posted by: Kevin Diaz Updated: April 22, 2013 - 11:35 AMWASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s former chief of staff, GOP operative Andy Parrish, stated in a signed affidavit Monday that the Minnesota Republican approved payments made to a top aide who was barred by Iowa Senate ethics rules from accepting money for his work on her presidential campaign.
The suspected payments to Iowa Sen. Kent Sorenson, first alleged in a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint filed by campaign whistleblower Peter Waldron, are now the subject of an inquiry by the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee.
Sorenson or his company, Grassroots Strategy, allegedly were paid $7,500 a month through C&M Strategies, a Colorado-based company run by Bachmann fundraiser Guy Short, who was serving as the campaign’s national political director.
“Congresswoman Bachmann knew of and approved this arrangement,” Parrish said in his affidavit. “She, like the rest of us, understood from Senator Sorenson that it did not run afoul of any Iowa Senate ethics rules. We relied on his representations in this regard.”
Sorensen, who switched allegiances from Bachmann to Ron Paul days before the 2012 Iowa caucuses, has called the payment allegations “totally baseless.”
Parrish, a close Bachmann aide who worked in her congressional office and on her presidential bid, said he was instrumental in recruiting Sorenson, a Tea Party figure who served as the chairman of Bachmann’s Iowa campaign.
Bachmann’s campaign acknowledged the restrictions Sorenson faced in an October 27, 2011, press release, two months before the Iowa Caucuses, where she finished sixth and dropped out: “Sorenson is serving in a full-time role but state Senate rules preclude lawmakers from being paid by the campaign.”
But according to Parrish, Sorenson was instead paid indirectly through C&M Strategies. Such an arrangement could potentially skirt Iowa ethics rules designed to avoid conflicts of interest between state officials and candidates in the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses.
Short is also the subject of an FEC inquiry because he was being paid by Bachmann’s independent political organization, MichelePAC, at the same time that he was working on her presidential campaign, a potential violation of federal election rules.
Attorneys for Short and the Bachmann campaign say his work for Michele PAC, which paid him $40,000 in the months preceding and after the caucuses, was separate from his campaign work.
The alleged financial improprieties are the subject of a separate inquiry by the independent Office of Congressional Ethics, which is also looking into whether the campaign improperly helped promote Bachmann’s political memoir, Core of Conviction.
The investigations are part of a growing web of legal problems facing Bachmann, including a lawsuit by former staffer Barbara Heki alleging that Sorenson stole a proprietary e-mail list of Iowa home-school families from her personal computer. Those allegations also are the subject of an ongoing police investigation in Urbandale, Iowa.
Here is the affidavit:
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