Conservatives fuel Bachmann’s campaign

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has raised $850,000 in
the past 11 days through aggressive appeals to conservatives that she has been
targeted for her beliefs, a top campaign consultant said.

The campaign started a campaign Oct. 20 to reach out to
conservative talk radio, blogs and other outlets, shortly after controversial
remarks that ignited the underfinanced campaign of her Democratic challenger
Elwyn Tinklenberg.

{mosads}“We’ve been telling people that her opponents were
attacking her and trying to remove a real conservative,” said Ed Brookover with
Bachmann’s media firm, Greener and Hook.

The resulting ad buy was aggressive enough, Brookover said,
that “We bumped the [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC)].”

The DCCC charged into the race with $1 million worth of
ads to target Bachmann after the lawmaker said in a television interview that
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and other members of
Congress hold “anti-American” views. She later denied the comments.

That whipped up support for Tinklenberg, who had been
given little chance to beat the freshman incumbent. Since then, Tinklenberg has
seen a flood of campaign contributions and polls show the race tightening.

Amid the furor, the National Republican Congressional
Committee (NRCC) opted not to purchase air time it had reserved for television
advertising.

That prompted the conservative Family Research Council’s (FRC)
political arm to rip NRCC Chairman Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), saying he was
abandoning conservatives like Bachmann.

“This is no time to cut and run from a fight,” FRC’s
Tony Perkins stated.

NRCC officials are privately bristling at the criticism,
noting that she had nearly $1.4 million in the bank at the end of the third
quarter. They say the financial boost she’s gotten in the past two weeks proves
their point.

“She couldn’t spend any more money,” a Republican
official said.

In a memo issued in response to the criticism, NRCC
spokeswoman Karen Hanretty emphasized that Cole does not get to decide which
candidates get financial help. The NRCC’s Independent Expenditure is “a
segregated unit, firewalled off from the rest of the NRCC,” she wrote.

She added that, with scarce resources, the committee cannot
afford to help candidates already in a strong position.

“Some candidates like Congresswoman Bachmann, are sitting
on more than $1 million cash on hand in districts that President Bush won in
2004 by double digits,” she wrote.

But Bachmann’s campaign remains concerned. Spokeswoman
Michelle Marston said the $1 million figure is from now-outdated campaign
finance reports, and Bachmann’s opponent has made huge gains since Bachman set
off a firestorm in a television interview earlier this month.

“The DCCC hadn’t done much to support our opponent, but
then he was able to raise $1 million very quickly and the DCCC put in $1
million,” Marston said.

But Marston said Bachmann herself was not counting on
NRCC support.

“We knew this was going to be a tough race,” Marston
said. “We knew we were going to have to take care of ourselves.”

For their part, DCCC officials are clearly pleased that
they have been able to add another seat to their list of targets late in the
campaign.

“In a matter of
two weeks,” said DCCC spokesman Doug Thornell, “Michele Bachmann went from a
cable television star making outrageous and divisive comments to a desperate
incumbent on the brink of losing reelection.”