Childhood & Early Life
She was born Michele Marie Amble on April 6, 1956, into a family of Norwegian ‘Lutheran Democrats,’ in Waterloo, Iowa, US. Her family relocated to Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, when she was a kid.
Following the divorce of her parents, David John Amble and Arlene Jean (née Johnson), in 1970, she started staying with her mother. Her mother worked at the ‘First National Bank’ in Anoka, Minnesota. Her father, an engineer, remarried and relocated to California. Her mother too remarried widower Raymond J. LaFave.
Michele attended the ‘Anoka High School,’ from where she graduated in 1974. She then worked on Kibbutz Be'eri in Israel for a summer. She studied at the ‘Winona State University’ and earned a BA degree in 1978. While in her senior year, Michele became a ‘Republican,’ although she belonged to a family of ‘Democrats.’
She attended the first class of the ‘O. W. Coburn School of Law’ in 1979 and graduated as part of its last class, obtaining a Juris Doctor (JD) degree in 1986. Thereafter, she attended the ‘William & Mary Law School,’ from where she earned an LLM degree in tax law, in 1988.
She served the ‘IRS’ as an attorney, from 1988 to 1993, before leaving the job to concentrate on motherhood after the birth of her fourth child.
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Career
Michele was involved with the pro-life movement, while she studied, and participated in sidewalk counselling outside abortion clinics with her then-fiancé, Marcus Bachmann. They advised and persuaded women against abortion. She has since then remained an advocate of sidewalk counselling.
She garnered immense media attention in 1991, when she participated in a pro-life protest event that involved the ‘St. Paul-Ramsey Medical Center’ (presently ‘Regions Hospital’) that conducted abortions. She attended a Ramsey County board meeting along with other pro-life citizens and opposed the allocation of public taxes to the hospital.
In 1993, she founded the ‘K-12 New Heights Charter School’ in Stillwater, with other parents, but resigned after six months, after the school developed a strong Christian orientation. Parents complained about the school not complying with its charter that mandated it to be non-sectarian in all its endeavors.
She opposed a state-mandated set of educational standards that paved her way to the political sphere.
She succeeded 18-year incumbent Gary Laidig, who was not endorsed for re-election in 2000, for the ‘Republican’ nomination for the position of the ‘state senator’ of Minnesota’s 56th district.
She beat Lyno Sullivan of the ‘Minnesota Independence Party’ and Ted Thompson of the ‘Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’ (DFL) during the November 2000 general election, to become a member of the Minnesota senate from the 56th district. She assumed office on January 3, 2001.
Following a redistricting after the 2000 Census, she beat incumbent member of the Minnesota senate from the 52nd district, Jane Krentz of the ‘DFL,’ in November 2002, to become the new state senator from the newly chalked-out district. She assumed office on January 7, 2003, and served till January 2, 2007, earning repute for opposing gay marriage and abortion. She was also known for her extravagant style.
Meanwhile, a constitutional amendment was proposed by Michele, along with Representative Mary Liz Holberg, on November 20, 2003, which could have prevented the state from acknowledging same-sex marriage legally. She was unsuccessful in putting a marriage amendment on a referendum ballot in 2004.
Her anti-tax stand led to her ouster as the ‘assistant minority leader in charge of Policy for the ‘Senate Republican Caucus’ in July 2005, a position she had earned in November 2004.
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She eyed for a seat in the ‘US House of Representatives’ and her 2006 congressional campaign saw her garnering support from the likes of the then-president George W. Bush and noted ‘Republican’ political consultant and policy advisor Karl Rove.
On January 3, 2007, she succeeded Mark Kennedy to become a member of the ‘US House of Representatives’ from the 6th district of Minnesota, and with this, she emerged as the first ‘Republican’ lady to get elected to the ‘US House’ from the state. She was elected to the 110th ‘Congress,’ as a ‘Republican,’ and thereafter, for the next three ‘Congresses’ too, thereby allowing her to hold the position till January 3, 2015.
In 2008, she turned heads with her comments regarding the anti-American representatives in ‘Congress’ on the ‘MSNBC’ talk show ‘Hardball with Chris Matthews.’ She created further controversy with critics tagging her as the reincarnation of Senator Joe McCarthy, when she stated that Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama had “anti-American” views. After Barack Obama assumed office as the 44th president of the US, on January 20, 2009, she came forth among the most candid opponents of the former.
She backs the American conservative movement known as the ‘Tea Party’ movement, which began in 2009 and is roughly allied with the conservative ‘Republican’ section. On July 19, 2010, she founded the congressional caucus of conservative ‘Republican’ members in the ‘US House of Representatives,’ known as the ‘Tea Party Caucus’ (TPC) and served as its first chair.
She began her 2012 presidential campaign in June 2011 and declared her run for the 2012 ‘Republican Party’ nomination for the president of the US, on June 13, 2011, during the ‘CNN’ ‘Republican’ primary debate. Two weeks later, she formally announced her participation in the presidential race in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa.
In August 2011, she won the ‘Ames Straw Poll.’ However, she dropped out of the presidential race on January 4, 2012, after finishing 6th at the Iowa ‘Republican’ caucus.
On May 29, 2013, she declared through a video on her website that she "will not seek a fifth Congressional term" in 2014. In an interview with ‘Fox News,’ in June 2013, she stated that she wished to remain associated with politics and was "not going silent." She also kept open a possibility of a prospective run for the ‘White House.’
In an interview with stained televangelist Jim Bakker, in December 2017, she mentioned that she was considering running for the ‘US Senate’ seat left by Al Franken, in the forthcoming November 2018 special election.
Personal Life
A former beauty-pageant queen, Michele married Marcus Bachmann, a clinical therapist, in 1978. They knew each other since their undergraduate days. They are blessed with five children - Sophia, Elisa, Caroline, Harrison, and Lucas. From 1992 to 2000, they were licensed to provide foster care to a maximum of three foster children at a time, and have remained foster parents of 23 teenage girls to date.
The couple relocated to Stillwater, Minnesota, in 1988. They provide gay conversion therapy through their Christian counseling center, ‘Bachmann & Associates.’
On March 19, 2012, the couple and their three youngest children were granted Swiss citizenship. However, as reports of her dual citizenship started doing the rounds, she declared that she had decided to withdraw her Swiss citizenship by writing to the Swiss consulate.
