Commenter Anna alerts us to this St Paul Legal Ledger article.
Dems targeting Bachmann
By Betsy Sundquist, Staff Writer
July 13, 2009
Hard-right congresswoman continues to court controversy; Democrats say she’s vulnerable
There’s blood in the water of Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District.
Three viable Democratic candidates – only two of whom have actually declared their candidacies – are circling the pond, hoping to bring down ultraconservative, second-term U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in the 2010 election.
And it’s only July.
At least one of the candidates, former chairwoman of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents Maureen Reed, is scooping up piles of money in her quest to unseat Bachmann, who has continued to draw the national political spotlight since her re-election last year with provocative, sound bite-generating remarks, many of them as a frequent guest on Fox News’ conservative talk-show lineup.
In the two months since she announced her plan to seek the endorsements of both the Democratic and Independence parties to challenge Bachmann next year, Reed has raised more than $230,000, according to a press release distributed by her campaign.
“When I talk to residents in the 6th District, it’s clear they are ready for a change and want a candidate who has the energy, commitment and dedication to improve their lives,” Reed said in her very polite statement, which never referred directly to Bachmann’s high-profile hard-right crusades.
“When folks see a way they can change things for the better, they are generous with their time, energy and money,” Reed added.
Elwyn Tinklenberg, who unsuccessfully challenged Bachmann last year (losing by a margin of only 3 percentage points) and plans to seek the Democratic endorsement to run against her again next year, is more blunt in his assessment of the congresswoman’s performance, calling her behavior “beyond embarrassing” and “disgraceful” on his campaign website.
“She built her political career in Minnesota exploiting wedge issues, and now she’s taken it to the national level,” Tinklenberg’s website says. “Almost every day she shows up on Fox News to spread fear and division for political gain.
“Enough is enough. While Americans are suffering through a deep recession, Michele Bachmann knowingly uses extreme partisan rhetoric for political fame … She knows that the more bizarre and outlandish statements she makes, the more attention she gets.”
The article also aludes to the rumors that Assistant Majority Leader, Sen. Tarryl Clark might get into the race:
The name of state Sen. Tarryl Clark, DFL-St. Cloud, is also being floated as a potential candidate for Bachmann’s seat, though Clark has not yet declared her candidacy.
A Senate partisan staff member told PIM/Capitol Report last week that Clark has received “a lot of encouragement” to take on Bachmann instead of joining the ever-growing crowd of gubernatorial candidates vying to move into the St. Paul office that Gov. Tim Pawlenty will vacate in early 2011. (Clark’s gubernatorial candidacy has also been a topic of much speculation.)
The article also mentions her census shenanagans:
Bachmann’s latest high-profile (and much-ridiculed) campaign is against the 2010 U.S. census, which she compared on yet another Fox News appearance last month to World War II Japanese internment camps.
“Take this into consideration,” Bachmann told Fox News host Glenn Beck. “If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that’s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps.
“I’m not saying that that’s what the administration is planning to do, but I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up, in a violation of their constitutional rights, and put the Japanese in internment camps.”
Bachmann said she and her family plan only to provide the number of people in their home and will refuse to answer any more census questions.
(As many have noted, the 2010 census will play a large role in determining redistricting, which may cost Minnesota a seat in Congress.) |
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