Rep. Bachmann looks forward to 'limitless' future, but not in the House
Updated Wednesday 5/29 at 10:30 a.m. ET
(CNN) - U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, a conservative firebrand whose bid for president last year ended after the Iowa caucuses, will not seek re-election to her Minnesota congressional seat in 2014.
Making her announcement in a video posted to her campaign website early Wednesday, Bachmann stressed she had no plans to fade from public view.
"Looking forward, after the completion of my term, my future is full, it is limitless, and my passions for America will remain," she announced.
Bachmann, who's in her fourth term representing Minnesota's 6th District, promised that there "is no future option or opportunity" that she "won't be giving serious consideration if it can help save and protect our great nation for future generations."
Bachmann staved off a tougher-than-expected challenge for her seat last November against Democrat Jim Graves, winning re-election by just under 5,000 votes. Graves has announced he will seek the seat again in 2014.
In her video announcement, Bachmann said her decision was not influenced by any concerns about winning reelection.
"I've always, in the past, defeated candidates who were capable, qualified, and well-funded. And I have every confidence that if I ran, I would again defeat the individual who I defeated last year, who recently announced that he is once again running," Bachmann said.
Nor was her decision based on any concerns over an ongoing congressional ethics inquiry into the improper transfer of campaign funds, Bachmann said in her video. She is also facing a Federal Election Commission complaint about her former presidential campaign.
"This decision was not impacted in any way by the recent inquiries into the activities of my former presidential campaign or my former presidential staff," she said. "It was clearly understood that compliance with all rules and regulations was an absolute necessity for my presidential campaign. And I have no reason to believe that that was not the case."
Bachmann's run for president in 2012 reached its peak in August 2011, when she beat out a slate of other candidates to win the Ames Straw Poll in the early voting state of Iowa, where she was born. Her campaign lost steam in the fall to other conservative candidates like Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, and she eventually placed sixth in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. She ended her presidential bid the next day.
In the eight-minute long video, Bachmann, an early supporter of the Tea Party movement, touted her work on a variety of conservative issues, promising to "to work vehemently and robustly to fight back against what most in the other party want to do to transform our country into becoming, which would be a nation that our founders would hardly even recognize today."
Bachmann was one of the leading supporters of the emerging tea party movement in 2010, founding the "tea party caucus" in the House of Representatives and delivering her own "tea party response" to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address. Most recently she organized a tea party rally on Capitol Hill protesting the Internal Revenue Service's admitted targeting of conservative groups applying for tax exempt status.
In her video, she said she wouldn't let up on the causes she championed as a U.S. representative.
"I promise you I have and I will continue to fight to protect innocent human life, traditional marriage, family values, religious liberty, and academic excellence," Bachmann said.
In a polite statement, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Rep. Greg Walden wrote Bachmann "has been a tireless advocate and dedicated Representative for the people of Minnesota’s Sixth District."
"Michele was the first Republican woman elected to represent Minnesota in the U.S. House of Representatives, and she has worked hard each day to ensure that her constituents’ voices are heard in the halls of Congress," he continued.
Democrats were less laudatory - the House Majority PAC, which works to elect Democrats to Congress, wrote Bachmann's decision was "good news for the people of Minnesota and our nation."
"Bachmann voluntarily removing herself from Congress is a victory we can all celebrate today," the group's executive director Alixandria Lapp wrote.
CNN's Kevin Liptak and Martina Stewart contributed to this report.
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The last sentence of the article tells me that the Republicans are still delusional. I guess the 2012 BO November election didn't teach them anything!!!!!
@this is it, Please run them on the ticket together. You think the lines were long this time? If Sarah and Michelle are on the ticket people will be camping overnight at the polls to make sure that their vote is counted to keep tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum out of office. LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
see ya won't miss ya, say hello the daffy duck and the rest of the loony tunes.
God has answered our prayers and shown that hate and discrimination are fundamentally wrong.
My guess is she wants to move to a state where gay marriage is still banned, she can't handle the change.
She did her 2 terms and now gets medical and pension..what more do you need. She wasn't stupid, the votes were.
Good riddance! Your political life was nothing more than an pathetic extension of your insipid religious views in the hopes of making everyone a devout Christian. Get it together Michelle: Gays Don't Need Your Conversion Theraphy!
Now, go off and bake cookies, have children and wash dishes as a good Christian wife should.
real simple: she will get a talk show and explot all the bigots and make millions off of them in the name of "Love of country" jst as Palin and Huckabee did
Thank you!!!!!
Surely there are other places for her to spread her messages of hate, intolerance, war-mongering, and xenophobia.
Maybe she can get a tour together like the American Idol losers for the summer.
Hooray! Now maybe she can go back to school and learn that the Revolution started in Concord, MA, not NH!
I still can't figure out why the people of the sixth district voted for her. Oh wait, didn't this state elect a wrestler? Good place for a cult.
When you talk about the close election not being a factor in her decision, you know it was.
this lady did nothing for the country but spread hate and the only reason she is not running for reelection is
because she broke the law and no what is to come.
Looks like "god's work" is abruptly completed, once the FBI, starts investigating your "work ethic"!
And she was perfect about removing all doubt about the republican party.
I just wish all members of congress would step down before the die of old age while in office.
Completely UN-HONORABLE DISCHARGE from office...
Started as a democrat, ended as an unfinished tea party politician. It looked like her life had run for a bait but not getting a bite yet. A hint about the destiny of the tea party ?
Woo Hoo is all I can say.
Don't let the door hit ya where the non-existent "Lord" split ya, Michelle.
Well, this is the best news in days. I'll give her this: she's a good looking broad, but it pretty much ends there. She and Sarah Palin could contend for the dumbest female in the GOP title. She'll probably go out on a speaking tour, at $50K or more per speech, filling her Tea Party dopey compatriots with more misinformation.
Shhh! Don't wake me up to discover it was only a dream and she really is not retiring.
One less crackpot selling poison tea. She has the eyes of a cultist who sold her soul.
Oh no! The intelligence committee will lose 80 IQ points.
Michele is a pathological liar. You cannot believe a word she says. I should know.