May 9, 2012

Checking in With Michele Bachmann…

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) signs a supporter's head.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/teambachmann/6545315509/sizes/z/in/photostream/">TeamBachmann</a>/Flickr

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On Tuesday morning, newly christened Swiss citizen Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) blasted out the frantic email to her national supporter network, asking for money:

I’m reaching out to you today because I need your support to continue fighting in the U.S. House of Representatives against President Obama’s big government agenda.

A major development has just occurred in my race for the U.S. House of Representatives and I’m asking for your immediate help…

…You see, in retaliation for repeatedly standing up to President Obama on the national stage, liberal judges have redrawn the lines of my Minnesota Congressional District to try and wipe me off of the political map once and for all.

Their bias was so obvious they even gerrymandered my home—where my wonderful husband Marcus and I live—entirely out of my District and placed it into one held by a six-term Democrat incumbent!

Yikes. Also: totally false. The so-called major development that “just occured” actually happened in February, and in the interim period, Bachmann has sent no fewer than four fundraising emails calling attention to said major development. The “liberal judges” tasked with drawing up Minnesota’s new congressional districts were selected by the state’s chief justice, Lorie Gildea, who was appointed to the bench by former Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty. (Just two of the judges on the five-judge redistricting panel were Democratic appointees.)

Although Bachmann sounds deeply hurt that she and Marcus will no longer live in her district, the move actually makes her district more Republican. The redistricting panel swapped Bachmann’s Washington County, a more moderate county that includes suburbs of St. Paul, with a more conservative rural county. (If it makes her feel better, the district still includes Anoka, where she attended high school.) Democrat Jim Graves, the Minneapolis hotel magnate who’s challenging Bachmann this fall, has his hands full.

This isn’t out of the ordinary for Bachmann. As I reported last summer, Bachmann has for years falsely claimed that she was targeted for redistricting by Democrats when she served in the Minnesota state senate. (Then, as now, the redistricting was controlled by a Republican judge, and Bachmann was placed in a conservative-leaning district).

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

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