Anti-gay Michele Bachmann may run for U.S. Senate
Former Minnesota congresswoman mulls bid for seat recently vacated by Sen. Al Franken
Former Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, known best for her socially conservative views and vehement opposition to LGBTQ rights, has announced she is weighing a bid for the U.S. Senate.
Bachmann appeared on televangelist Jim Bakker’s The Jim Bakker Show to talk about her political future and reiterate her support for President Trump’s agenda.
While on air, she said she was considering running for the seat recently vacated by Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken, who stepped down on Tuesday following sexual harassment allegations from multiple women.
Franken’s replacement is former Lt. Gov. Tina Smith, who has announced her intention to run for the remainder of Franken’s term. That means that the low-profile Smith will have to put together a campaign to run not only in 2018, but again in 2020, when the seat is up for a regular six-year term.
During her appearance on The Jim Bakker Show, Bachmann lamented the fact that, should she step in to the fray for the Senate race, she would be attacked by Washington insiders and potentially even mocked for her socially conservative views.
“It is really tough if you are going against the tide in D.C. — if you are trying to stand for biblical principles in D.C. and you stick your head up out of the hole, the blades come roaring and they come to chop you off,” she said.
Bachmann, who ran for president in 2012 and served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2015, courted controversy and headlines during her tenure. A frequent guest of the Family Research Council’s Values Voters Summit, she served as part of President Trump’s evangelical advisory council during his campaign.
Bachmann previously criticized former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer for vetoing a bill that would have granted religious exemptions to business owners who refuse to provide goods or services to LGBTQ individuals and same-sex couples.
She has railed against same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption, and accused the LGBTQ community of “bullying” the American people by intimidating politicians into not passing so-called “religious freedom” measures.
Bachmann voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy during her time in Congress.
During her time in the Minnesota State Senate, Bachmann claimed that God told her to introduce an amendment to ban same-sex marriage in Minnesota. At the time, she said that if her amendment failed, schools in Minnesota would essentially be forced into teaching homosexual behavior, as the gay community would rewrite the state’s sex education curriculum to endorse same-sex activity.
Bachmann told Bakker that she felt that she had fulfilled her “calling” by God when she retired from Congress, including her efforts to make the issue of Obamacare a top priority in the 2012 presidential race.
“The question is, am I being called to do this now?” she said of a potential Senate bid against Smith. “I don’t know.”
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