Former Rep. Michele Bachmann suggested she’s thinking of jumping in the Minnesota Senate race to replace Sen. Al Franken, but is waiting for a sign from God.
‘The question is, should it be me? Should it be now?’ she mused, during an appearance with televangelist Jim Bakker. ‘I’ve had people contact me and urge me to run for that Senate seat, and the only reason I would run is for the ability to take these principles into the United States.’
Bachmann explained that she would return to D.C., if elected, and fight for ‘Biblical principles,’ as she explained how God guided her in her political career before.
Former Rep. Michele Bachmann said she’s being encouraged to run for Sen. Al Franken’s Senate seat, but she’s waiting for a sign from God
Former Rep. Michele Bachmann (right), who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, sat down with televangelist Jim Bakker (left)
Sen. Al Franken officially stepped down from the Senate today. Tina Smith, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor, was appointed by the governor to fill the seat until voters choose a new senator in November
‘I trust in a big God. And so he got us over all those finish lines, but I also believe I was supposed to run for president,’ Bachmann said.
In 2012, Bachmann became the second woman in history to run for the GOP nomination.
The campaign was short-lived, however, as she placed sixth in the Iowa caucuses, and dropped out in early January before the next contest.
‘I didn’t even run because I thought I was going to win, I ran to put the whole issue of Obamacare front and center before the American people,’ she said.
She called her campaign ‘wildly successful’ because she got her GOP peers to back a full Obamacare repeal.
‘I didn’t win, but moved the debate,’ she said. ‘So I didn’t shed a tear when I left the contest because I felt like, you know, I fulfilled the calling God gave me.’
Turning to the potential opportunity standing in front of her she mused, ‘So the question is, am I being called to do this now?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, giving a non-answer to her own question.
Bachmann, who latched onto the Tea Party movement shortly after President Obama’s election, left Congress in 2015, as it looked like Minnesotans in her reliably red district lacked the appetite to vote her in again.
Running state-wide would be even harder.
Minnesota currently has two Democratic senators: Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who also has to run for re-election in 2018 and the incoming Sen. Tina Smith, the state’s lieutenant governor who will hold Franken’s old seat for about a year.
Voters will choose a long-term replacement for Franken in the November election.
And while a handful of Midwestern states flipped from blue to red in 2016, Minnesota remained in Hillary Clinton’s column.
Bachmann cited money issues and how toxic D.C. has become when expressing her reservations.
‘My husband and I aren’t money people. That’s the thing. We’re normal people, we’re not money people. If you’re a billionaire, maybe you can defend yourself,’ she said, saying that the ‘price is bigger than ever because the swamp is so toxic.’
She also acknowledged the emotional price she’s likely have to pay if she jumped back into politics.
‘It is really tough,’ she said. ‘If you’re going against the tide in D.C., if you’re trying to stand for Biblical principles in D.C. and you stick your head out of the hole, the blades come whirring and they try to chop you off.’
‘This is not an easy place to be,’ the ex-lawmaker lamented.