Michele Bachmann speaks to members of the media after meeting with Donald Trump at Trump Tower on 5th Avenue on November 21, 2011 in New York City. Image by Getty Images

By Aiden Pink January 2, 2018

Former Rep. Michele Bachmann is considering running for Al Franken’s vacated Senate seat, she said in an interview last week.

Franken’s resignation on Tuesday triggered a November special election in Minnesota to fill the last two years of his term. Bachmann, who represented a Minnesota district in the House for eight years, said on “The Jim Bakker Show” that people were urging her to run, and that she was waiting for a sign from God as to whether she should enter the race.

Bachmann told Bakker that she had been called by God to run in the 2012 presidential race, when she finished sixth in the Iowa caucuses. “So the question is am I being called to do this now?” she said. “I don’t know.”

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Franken’s seat has been held by a Jewish senator since 1978. Bachmann, an evangelical Christian who made cultural issues a focus of her time in Washington, has some ties to the Jewish community — she is a prominent supporter of Israel, and once worked on a kibbutz.

But she has also attracted criticism from American Jews, including for her right-wing stances. A surprise visit by Bachmann to a Chicago synagogue on Yom Kippur in 2012 triggered walkouts from congregants.

In 2014, Bachmann accused American Jewish organizations of having “sold out Israel” in favor of maintaining ties to the Obama administration. The following year, she publicly called for an intensified effort to convert Jews to Christianity.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

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