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Michele Bachmann Leaves No Doubt About Re-Election

(Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call File Photo)
(Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

Let there be no doubt, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) staked her claim today on the newly drawn 6th district of Minnesota.

A special court panel drew the Congresswoman’s home into Rep. Betty McCollum’s (D) 4th district, but she forcefully told Roll Call that the 6th district was where she planned to continue her legislative career.

“I wanted to be very clear, unmistakable, unequivocal today out of the gate, I will be running in the 6th district,” she said. “So there was no question so people would be able to make their decisions accordingly as well.”

In the email, she described the court as having a “liberal bias” and called the map an “injustice” because of “cherrypicking the districts and going so far as to draw my home – where I have raised my family and represented in Congress for the past six years – outside the new sixth district.”

Bachmann does not live within the lines of the new 6th, but it is not unusual for candidates or Members to run in a district where they don’t live. Also, in the new map, the 6th district actually is more favorable to a Republican candidate.

Bachmann described the 6th district in the interview as where she “grew up” and said she has “been associated with the 6th Congressional district for 44 years.”

Some might say that sentiment runs counter to her diction during her run for the presidency, in which she often referred to her “Iowa roots” and made comments on the trail like, “Everything I need to know, I learned in Iowa.”

But Bachmann indicated she does not think the two associations are in conflict.

“Oh, goodness no. Not at all,” she said. “I was proud to be born and reared in Iowa, I was a seventh-generation Iowan.”

She then mentioned her move at 12 to Minnesota. “We moved up to the Twin Cities to near the 6th Congressional district, and that is where I attended elementary school, junior high, high school, college, we grew our business and grew our family.”

As for the presidential contest, Bachmann refrained from endorsing but did not rule one out. “If my endorsement would help unify the party, then I will give that endorsement, but that’s what I want to do: unify, not factionalize,” Bachmann said.

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