Bachmann's Minnesota Race A Gift That Keeps on Giving -- to Democrats

By Greg Giroux
CQ Politics
April 21, 2009 12:09 PM

Who was the biggest donor to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in March, transferring $250,000 to the House Democrats' campaign arm from a candidate committee?

Speaker Nancy Pelosi? Nope. Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer? Another nice try, but wrong again.

The answer is actually someone who doesn't even serve in Congress: El Tinklenberg, a Minnesota Democrat who fell short in his bid last year to represent the 6th District north and east of the Twin Cities. His campaign committee, Tinklenberg for Congress, gave the quarter-million to the DCCC in two $125,000 installments, according to a campaign finance report the DCCC filed Monday.

So why would Tinklenberg have so much money to spare at the end of a competitive campaign? You may recall that his Republican opponent was Rep. Michele Bachmann, whose mid-October comment that Obama "may have anti-American views" angered Democrats nationwide and spawned an avalanche of contributions to Tinklenberg in the waning days of a campaign that Bachmann won by 46 percent to 43 percent, with a third-party candidate taking 10 percent.

(More here.)