AP sources: Bachmann staff in New Hampshire quits (AP)

EXETER, N.H. – Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann is losing her New Hampshire staff. As many as five staffers formally left Bachmann's campaign this week, two people with direct knowledge of the situation said Friday. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose internal workings of the campaign.

Bachmann spokeswoman Alice Stewart disputed reports of a staff shakeup, saying: "We have a great team in New Hampshire. We haven't been notified that anyone's left the campaign."

Still, Stewart said that she hadn't been able to reach the top New Hampshire staff to confirm they were still on board. She said she had reached some junior staffers who didn't say they were leaving.

Campaign finance reports show that Bachmann, who has fallen in polls and struggled to raise money, had five paid staff in New Hampshire as recently as late September.

The Republican presidential contender has largely ignored the first-in-the-nation primary state in recent months. She has been focused on Iowa and South Carolina, where her social conservative message has more appeal.

Bachmann has visited New Hampshire twice since launching her presidential campaign in June, and Stewart acknowledged a greater focus on Iowa, where Bachmann was born and where she won the GOP's presidential straw poll in August.

According to Bachmann aides, her Iowa staff consists of 11 paid members, including her national political director who relocated to Iowa this fall. The staff is among the larger teams in the leadoff caucus state.

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Associated Press writer Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

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Republicans Perry, Bachmann share stage in Iowa (Reuters)

WATERLOO, Iowa (Reuters) – Two of the leading Republican candidates for president avoided confrontation on Sunday as they attended the same Iowa fund-raiser to court the party's social and religious conservatives.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, already seen as a leader in the field despite just entering the 2012 race on Saturday, and Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman aligned with the Tea Party movement, shared a stage and struck the same tune.

"Everybody's got their own issues that matter, but at the end of the day, getting America working again is what the bulk of the people really care about," Perry told a swarm of reporters shortly after arriving in the venue.

During an interview with Radio Iowa a few hours before the Sunday evening event, Bachmann avoided directly criticizing or challenging Perry. Instead, she focused on her victory in the Iowa straw poll on Saturday, calling it "step number one in a long journey."

"I intend to earn every Iowan's vote," she said.

Perry had been expected to enter the race for weeks, setting the stage for a fight with Bachmann to win the support of social conservatives. Already, his entry has voters, even Bachmann supporters, considering a switch to Perry.

John Sabbath, 79, of Cedar Falls, said Bachmann has "the right philosophy" on economics, but "down the line" he might be interested in another candidate like Perry.

"We don't know that much about Rick Perry," he said. "We know some, but not a lot."

Steve Sukup, a businessman, former state legislator and 2002 Republican candidate for governor of Iowa, suggested Perry and Bachmann would make good running mates.

"I think we're seeing the ticket tonight," said Sukup. "I think he's just a solid conservative. He's got the right background ... and then Michele has tremendous enthusiasm."

The event was held in the Electric Park Ballroom in Waterloo, Iowa, a venue Bachmann chose for her own "homecoming" event in June, the evening before formally launching her candidacy with a speech in downtown Waterloo.

Perry told reporters he would spend "a lot of time in Iowa" as part of a broad national campaign in all 50 states. Iowa holds the first vote on party nominees for presidents in early January, followed by New Hampshire and South Carolina before building to multiple states by the end of March.

"We're a long way until the end of the race, and it's a marathon, not a sprint," Perry told reporters. "So we're going to be running hard and spending a lot of time in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and lots of other states."

(Reporting by Kay Henderson; Editing by Todd Eastham)

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Romney over Bachmann in head-to-head matchup: Reuters/Ipsos poll (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican Mitt Romney easily leads rival Michele Bachmann in a head-to-head matchup of the two top declared candidates for the party's 2012 presidential nomination, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday.

Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has a 40 percent to 23 percent lead over Bachmann among Republicans and independents. Among independents only, Romney's lead was 10 percentage points.

Romney has been a fragile front-runner in the Republican race to find a challenger to President Barack Obama in 2012. He leads in national polls and fund-raising, but many Republicans have been left cold by the party's candidates and urged others to jump in the race.

Bachmann, a U.S. representative from Minnesota and an outspoken social conservative, has made an early campaign splash with heavy backing from Tea Party fiscal conservatives, but her ability to broaden her support will be critical.

The poll showed nearly half of the independents surveyed, 49 percent, were undecided. Romney led among independents by 27 percent to 17 percent.

"Bachmann is getting some support from independents, which is good news for her," said Ipsos pollster Julia Clark.

Some polls show Bachmann leading in Iowa, which kicks off the nominating battle and has an influential base of social and religious conservatives. Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who was popular with the conservative base, won Iowa in 2008 but could not duplicate that success elsewhere.

The poll of 1,173 adults, including 989 registered voters, was taken on Friday through Monday and had an overall margin of error of 3 percentage points.

It surveyed 444 Republicans, with a margin of error of 4.7 percentage points, and 221 independents, with a margin of error of 6.6 percentage points.

(Editing by Xavier Briand)

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Bachmann launches 2012 presidential bid (Reuters)

WATERLOO, Iowa (Reuters) – Rising Tea Party conservative Michele Bachmann leaped into the Republican 2012 presidential nomination race on Monday, saying the country cannot afford four more years of President Barack Obama's handling of the economy.

"Make no mistake about it, Barack Obama will be a one-term president," Bachmann, a member of the House of Representatives from Minnesota, said in announcing her candidacy with a blistering critique of the Democratic President.

Bachmann, 55, is attempting to establish herself as the conservative alternative to front-runner Mitt Romney among a crowded field of Republican candidates.

She was buoyed by a Des Moines Register poll on Saturday that showed her only one percentage point behind first-place Romney among Republicans in Iowa. The Midwestern state holds the first contest on the road to her party's presidential nomination.

Bachmann's challenge will be to gain the trust of voters beyond hard-core conservatives. While she may play well among social conservatives who dominate politics in Iowa, her future is far more uncertain in other parts of the country.

Her announcement speech, accompanied by rock music as traffic noise roared from a nearby highway, was full of rhetoric against Obama, memories of her Iowa childhood years and her rock-solid devotion to conservative principles of low taxes and low government spending.

Rather than taking shots at her Republican rivals, Bachmann urged voters to make a "bold choice" and pick her. She focused her energies on Obama's handling of the economy, still suffering from 9.1 percent unemployment.

'SUPPORT A FAMILY'

"We cannot afford four more years of millions of Americans who are out of work and are not making enough in wages to support a family. ... We cannot afford four more years of Barack Obama," she said to loud cheers from the crowd.

A former tax lawyer, Bachmann is the head of the Tea Party caucus in the House and is a fiscal hawk, as well as a strong critic of gay marriage and abortion.

The Tea Party is a loosely organized conservative political movement that emerged after Obama took office in 2009.

Her recent political rise shows the power of Tea Party fiscal conservatives who rose to prominence in last year's congressional elections, partly due to voter worries about the budget deficit, estimated to be $1.4 trillion in 2011.

Tea Party Republicans are pushing hard for steep spending cuts in bipartisan talks to avoid a debt default.

Bachmann will be vying with conservative rivals such as former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty in Iowa, where social conservatives play a major role in Republican politics. Pawlenty took a hit with a poor 7 percent showing in the Des Moines Register poll.

Despite the poor economy, Obama still heads most polls against Republican rivals in the 2012 election.

Bachmann quoted Obama as saying in February 2009 that if he did not get the economy growing in three years "there's going to be a one-term proposition."

"Well, Mr. President, your policies haven't worked, spending our way out of the recession hasn't worked, and so Mr. President we take you at your word," she said.

Her strong performance at a New Hampshire debate two weeks ago has given her a boost and prompted Republicans to take a second look at Bachmann, who is a mother of five children and has provided foster care for 23 others.

The crowd in Waterloo, where Bachmann was born, included ardent supporters and undecided voters who came to hear what she had to say.

"I'm looking for someone who can deliver on what she says, someone whose words and actions line up," said Jennifer Green of West Des Moines. "She's a little bit outside the box, she's a little bit different, different, and I think that may be what we need. And it would be cool to have a woman president."

Bachmann's presence in the race could dampen the chances that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will make a late entry into the campaign, since their messages resonate with the same conservative voters.

Unlike Palin, Bachmann holds public office.

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria in Washington)

(Editing by Paul Simao)

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Outspoken Bachmann launches White House bid (AP)

WATERLOO, Iowa – Outspoken tea party favorite Michele Bachmann cast herself as the "bold choice" for the Republican presidential nomination as she formally kicked off her campaign Monday in her Iowa home town.

Outside a sun-splashed historic mansion in Waterloo, Bachmann told a crowd of more than 100 family members, friends, supporters and others that she is waging her campaign "not for vanity," but because voters "must make a bold choice if we are to secure the promise of the future."

The three-term Minnesota congresswoman railed against the Democrat she hopes to oust — President Barack Obama.

"We can't afford four more years of Barack Obama," she said.

Bachmann steered clear of specific proposals she'd advance as president, a day after suggesting that the concerns over averting a debt crisis were "scare tactics" that could be solved by paying only the interest on U.S. obligations while lawmakers work on a deal to cut spending as part of a new debt ceiling. The idea has been dismissed as unworkable by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

She reminisced about her childhood in a Democratic household — and her own volunteer work for Democratic President Jimmy Carter's 1976 campaign. But she made clear her allegiances long ago shifted, stressing her tea party connections.

"The liberals, and to be clear I am not one of those, want you to believe the tea party movement is just the right wing of the Republican Party," she said. "Nothing could be further from the truth."

As a new Iowa poll this past weekend signaled she'll be a force in the state that opens the Republican nomination contest, Bachmann hopes to reshape the GOP field and how she's viewed by voters. After the formal Iowa kickoff, she planned to shift her focus to New Hampshire and South Carolina, other early voting states with traditions of separating the viable contenders from the political also-rans.

Bachmann, 55, has many wondering if the edgy side that turned her into a conservative star will be the one she shows on the presidential campaign trail. Her say-anything approach has earned her a loyal following but also plenty of guff from detractors who see her as a fringe politician prone to missteps.

In March, she famously flubbed Revolutionary War geography. She told a group of students and conservative activists in Manchester, N.H. "You're the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord." Those first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired in Massachusetts, not New Hampshire. She later admitted she made a mistake.

For this campaign, she has surrounded herself with no-nonsense veterans of national politics, some of whom have deep ties to the political establishment Bachmann typically eschews.

Striking a less contentious tone, Bachmann told the Iowa crowd.

"Our problems don't have an identity of party, they are problems that were created by both parties," she said, adding, "Americans aren't interested in affiliation, they're interested in solutions."

Bachmann's unswerving style provides a sharp contrast with the more measured way of 2012 rivals, such as former Govs. Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Others vying for the nomination are ex-Sen. Rick Santorum, Texas Rep. Ron Paul and businessman Herman Cain.

Possible late entrants include Texas Gov. Rick Perry and 2008 vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

A Des Moines Register poll published Sunday showed Bachmann and Romney far out front of the others in Iowa.

Some at Monday's event said they were giving her a hard look and could see supporting her at February's caucus.

Marv Dillavou, a firearms salesman, said he's not ready to commit to a candidate but likes what he's seen from Bachmann.

"I'm happy to see a serious female candidate. She's very accomplished," Dillavou said. Critics, he added, "make too much of every word, every innuendo gets blown out of proportion. It's good that she speaks her mind."

Cedar Falls retiree Terrye Kizlyk was also impressed.

"She speaks from here," Kizlyk said, pointing to her heart.

Bachmann's political climb has been swift, brushing off a school board race defeat just 12 years ago and moving rapidly from Minnesota's state Senate to Congress. In Washington, Bachmann vaulted to prominence by trying to block and now promising to repeal President Barack Obama's health care law. She has also tangled with GOP House leaders over her concerns they are too timid on federal spending cuts.

She's staunchly conservative on social issues, too, calling for more abortion restrictions and constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage.

In her latest national introduction, Bachmann has played up a softer side by highlighting her role in raising five children and 23 foster kids. But she's also gone hard at Obama, laying federal debt and deficits at his feet and accusing him of pushing the nation toward socialism.

Dubbing herself a "constitutional conservative," Bachmann said she would bring a vastly different philosophy to the White House.

"I don't believe that the solutions to our problems are Washington centric, I believe they are every American centric," she said.

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