Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann says her campaign is well-positioned to deal with an earlier date for the Iowa Caucuses, partly because of her Iowa Straw Poll victory this summer.
“We probably have a distinct advantage, because we’ve worked extremely hard in Iowa…so we’ll just work that much harder,” she said yesterday during a news conference in Des Moines.
The Iowa GOP is waiting for New Hampshire’s secretary of state to move the date of that state’s primary before declaring a new date for the Iowa Caucuses — moves that were necessary after Florida officials decided to hold a presidential primary in the “sunshine state” on January 31, 2012. South Carolina has moved it’s “first-in-the-south” primary to January 21. It means Iowa’s Caucuses may be held in the first week of January, with the possibility of a December date if New Hampshire’s primary moves much earlier.
“I’ve spent many Christmases here in Iowa growing up in Iowa so it doesn’t bother me at all if I have to spend Christmas in Iowa,” Bachmann told reporters Tuesday. “I’ll stay with my relatives, I imagine.”
Bachmann has made much of her early roots in Waterloo and kicked off her campaign in June with a speech in the eastern Iowa city. She touted a family reunion held in the Waterloo area after the Iowa Straw Poll on August 13, but later admitted the relatives Bachmann saw that weekend came to see her at her hotel in Waterloo as she did not go to the site of the family reunion.
Bachmann’s victory in the Straw Poll, thus far, has been the high-water mark for Bachmann’s candidacy as polling in Iowa and nationally has shown her support among likely voters falling since mid-August, when Texas Governor Rick Perry entered the race.
Bachmann wrapped up a two-day campaign swing through Iowa with stops in Des Moines and Newton yesterday and a fundraiser in Grinnell last night for The Family Leader, a group of social conservatives working to make gay marriage illegal in Iowa. Bachmann is among the six candidates who have agreed to speak at The Family Leader’s “Thanksgiving Family Forum” on November 19.