#mn-06

The leading Republican candidate in retiring Rep. Michele Bachmann’s congressional district denies climate science, is virulently anti-gay, and sponsored everything from voter ID legislation to a minimum wage law repeal. No wonder he’s already being labeled “Michele Bachmann 2.0.”

Former Minnesota State Rep. Tom Emmer (R) was the first candidate to step up when Bachmann announced last month that she would be retiring from representing the state’s 6th congressional district at the end of her term. He is best known for unsuccessfully running for Governor in 2010, coming close enough to Democratic candidate and now-Governor Mark Dayton (D) to trigger a recount.

Here are a few things voters should know about Tom Emmer:

1. He opposed anti-bullying legislation because he doesn’t “want the government doing that for us.” Emmer voted against the Safe Schools for All bill, which included sexual orientation among fourteen different characteristics, and would have introduced consistent anti-bullying policies and mandated training for teachers and staff. During his 2010 campaign, he promised to veto it if it were to come across his desk as Governor, saying, “it’s up to the parents, Jacquie and I, to educate our children, how they handle that situation. We’re the ones who have to be the front line of defense for our children. I don’t want the government doing that for us.” The bill was proposed after a rash of gay teens in Minnesota committing suicide. Emmer has adopted virulently anti-gay positions throughout his political career.

2. He thinks waiters make too much, proposed cutting their minimum wage. At a campaign stop in 2010, Emmer said he had heard from local restaurant owners that “there are some people earning over $100,000 a year, more than the very people providing the jobs and investing not only their life savings but their families’ future.” He suggested that bartenders, servers, and other hospitality workers should get a “tip credit,” which would functionally lower their minimum wage. Although Minnesota is one of the only states that does not follow the federal minimum wage for tip-earners of $2.13 (it instead requires tip-earners be paid at least $5.25 hourly), the average food or beverage service worker earned an average of only $10.45 an hour in 2010. Emmer introduced an amendment that would have eliminated the state’s minimum wage laws altogether in 2005.

3. He was one of the first conservatives pushing unconstitutional nullification bills to undermine Obamacare. Even before healthcare legislation passed in Congress, Emmer was making the rounds on Fox News, pushing the idea that any form of federal healthcare program would be unconstitutional. In October 2009, he proposed a “Health Care Freedom Act” that would define Minnesotans as “sovereign individuals” in an attempt to prevent federal law or state law from affecting the health insurance of any individual. Soon after the Affordable Care Act passed, Emmer began advocating nullification of federal laws, an unconstitutional theory used by advocates of slavery before the Civil War, in his state.

4. He denies climate science is real. In addition to calling green jobs a “fancy marketing campaign“, pledging to withdraw Minnesota from a regional climate pact, and telling supporters of the EPA to vote against him, Emmer has publicly denied climate science, saying, “the empirical evidence does not support this and the other reps that have talked. There is another side. Just because we make these chambers available to Will Steger and the crowd that wants to rely on Al Gore’s climate porn doesn’t mean that that’s the way it is. … Folks, there is another side.”

Watch it:

Emmer’s views keep him in good company in the 6th district – Michelle Bachmann is also a climate denier.

5. He wanted to make English the official state language because of the supposed high cost of translating. In 2008, Emmer co-sponsored a bill that would have made English the official state language of Minnesota, in addition to imposing strict immigration status checks for renters and buyers of homes. The Star Tribune asked him about his support of the language component of the bill two years later, reporting, “Emmer said he co-sponsored the 2008 measure because his home county said the cost of producing signs in multiple languages ‘was killing them.’”

During an interview with World Net Daily, former Republican presidential aspirant Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) raised the question: could Obamacare allow the IRS to “deny or delay” conservatives’ access to medical care?

Bachmann’s musings come on the heels of an ongoing IRS scandal centering on the agency’s improper scrutiny of conservative political groups. While right-wing commentators andpoliticians are already using the incident to smear the health law by raising questions about IRS access to Americans’ private medical data, Bachmann took things one step further:

Since the IRS also is the chief enforcer of Obamacare requirements,[Bachmann] asked whether the IRS’s admission means it “will deny or delay access to health care” for conservatives.

At this point, she said, that “is a reasonable question to ask.” […]

[S]hould Americans fear their government may try to harm them if they are conservative?

“It now is an entirely reasonable question for the American people to ask,” she said. “Will Obamacare be so politicized and misused?”

The IRS has been processing information about Americans’ health care for decades, since approximately 160 million Americans write off their tax-deductible employer-provided health benefits each year. 

This isn’t the first time Bachmann has made outlandish comments about Obamacare or health care in general. The congresswoman has previously asserted that Obamacare will “literally” kill people and propagated debunked conspiracy theories claiming that the HPV vaccine causes young girls to become “sexually promiscuous.”

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) could face a House Ethics Committee investigation into alleged campaign finance violations during her bid for the Republican presidential nomination last year, the Daily Beast reported Monday. The allegations are currently being investigated by the non-partisan Office of Congressional Ethics, which has about three months to decide whether to recommend cases for further investigation to the Ethics Committee. 

As the Daily Beast report details, this is not the only campaign-related investigation Bachmann is currently facing.

We finally have a conclusion in the 6th. AP calls it for Michele Bachmann. Final tally may be outside the automatic recount margin.

Locked in the toughest fight of her congressional career, Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann defended her witch hunt against alleged Muslim Brotherhood infiltrators in the federal government last night during the final debate against her Democratic challenger, Jim Graves. “I certainly do stand by those letters,” Bachmann said of the five letters she sent to the inspectors general of various security agencies warning that they may have been infiltrated by Muslim Brotherhood agents.

“The events in Benghazi have proved that the United States remains under attack, both in the Middle East, and here in the United States,” she continued last night. When the moderator noted that there’s no proof that the Muslim Brotherhood was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. diplomats in the Libyan city, Bachmann replied that “we are only just beginning” to investigate and suggested that all radical Islamists groups are tied to the Brotherhood.

Bachmann, in her letters, targeted several people by name, including Huma Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Abedin is widely liked by leaders in both parties in Washington, so Bachmann’s suggestion that she’s a terrorist sparked a backlash. “These allegations about Huma, and the report from which they are drawn, are nothing less than an unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable citizen, a dedicated American, and a loyal public servant,” Sen. John McCain said on the Senate floor in July. Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, along with House Speaker John Boehner, and even Bachmann’s former campaign manager, all condemned her publicly.

Jim Graves is a 58-year-old self-made Minnesota businessman and grandfather of seven, still married to his high-school sweetheart, running against a symbol of unhinged hyperpartisanship in the halls of Congress. Bachmann’s bizarre presidential run only highlighted what an awkward fit she is for the common sense civility that characterizes “Minnesota Nice.”

But she’s never faced a truly competitive opponent, despite a string of narrow wins—and that’s changed this time around.

“I started my first company in a basement with $2,000 in the bank, and I’ve been able to create thousands of jobs,” says Graves, who started the mid-scale AmericInn hotel chain. “I’m a person who understands the economy and has built real businesses on Main Street. Now I want to give something back. I’ll be a good ambassador for the district. And you can juxtapose that against Michele Bachmann—someone who’s divisive and antagonistic, ridicules our president, and spreads fear and division.”

“My policy approach transcends political lines,” Graves says. “I’m a centrist, a libertarian when it comes to social issues—I don’t think government should be involved with personal lives. I really believe in separation of church and state. Bachmann wants to blur those lines—she would [replace] our democracy with a theocracy … She epitomizes everything that’s wrong with Congress and this country—a lack of civility, a lack of bipartisan or nonpartisan approach to problem solving.”

Polls show the race is now neck and neck—with 48 percent for Bachmann and 46 percent for Graves and the remaining still undecided, according to a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll. Crucially, independent voters now lean toward Graves by a 15-point margin. Now the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is backing Graves in his campaign, showing it is very much in play.

But this is the most conservative district in Minnesota, compounded by redistricting. Moreover, Bachmann has been a successful conspiracy entrepreneur—raising millions of dollars in campaign donation by throwing out extreme statements—such as questioning how many fellow congressmen have “anti-American” views (to use one mild example)—and then fundraising off it by playing the victim.

“She makes these inflammatory comments for fundraising purposes,” Graves recognizes. “As soon as she says something outrageous, the money spigot opens up. I was just told she’s raised more than $20 million this race—that’s unbelievable in rural moderate Minnesota district. We’re more in the $2 million range—so she’s got a 10 to 1 advantage.”

But interestingly, Graves doesn’t connect his campaign to the current president. “My campaign isn’t an endorsement of President Obama’s first term in office,” Graves says. “I would have done some things differently than he did—I’m staying focused on doing what’s right for the people on the Sixth Congressional District.”

Graves believes the tipping point in the district was the combination of Bachmann’s presidential campaign creating embarrassment for constituents and a more recent self-inflicted scandal. “I think a turning point was Ms. Huma Abedin and the whole Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy theory. And when people in the district saw that Speaker Boehner and Senator McCain said this has no basis in reality, I think that woke people up here. That’s not what a person in Congress or especially a person on the intelligence committee should say.”