Michele Marie Bachmann (née Amble; April 6, 1956) is a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Minnesota's 6th congressional district, and a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. She previously served in the Minnesota State Senate and is the first Republican woman to represent the state in Congress. Bachmann is a supporter of the Tea Party movement and a founder of the House Tea Party Caucus.
Michele Bachmann was born in Waterloo, Iowa, "into a family of Norwegian Lutheran Democrats"; her family moved from Iowa to Minnesota when she was 13 years old. After her parents divorced, Bachmann's father, David John Amble, moved to California, and Bachmann was raised by her mother, Jean (née Johnson), who worked at the First National Bank in Anoka, Minnesota. Her mother remarried when Bachmann was a teenager; the new marriage resulted in a family with nine children.
She graduated from Anoka High School in 1974 and, after graduation, spent time working on a kibbutz in Israel. In 1978 she graduated from Winona State University with a B.A.
In 1979, Michele Bachmann was a member of the first class of the O. W. Coburn School of Law, then a part of Oral Roberts University (ORU). While there, Bachmann studied with John Eidsmoe, whom she described in 2011 as "one of the professors who had a great influence on me". Bachmann worked as a research assistant on Eidsmoe's 1987 book Christianity and the Constitution, which argues that the United States was founded as a Christian theocracy, and should become one again. In 1986 Bachmann received a J.D. degree from Oral Roberts University. She was a member of the final graduating class of the law school at ORU, and was part of a group of faculty, staff, and students who moved the ORU law school library to what is now Regent University.
In 1988, Michele Bachmann received an LL.M. degree in tax law from the William & Mary School of Law. From 1988 to 1993, she was an attorney working for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). She left her position with the IRS to become a full-time mother when her fourth child was born.
In early 2011, there was much speculation that Bachmann would run for president in 2012. Michele Bachmann participated in the second Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire on June 13, 2011; during the debate she announced she had filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) earlier that day to become a candidate for the GOP nomination. Bachmann formally announced her candidacy for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination on June 27, 2011 during an appearance in Waterloo, Iowa.
On August 13, 2011, she won the Ames Straw Poll hosted by the Iowa GOP.She was the first woman ever to win.