Bachmann may be in for a ferocious congressional race next year. | REUTERS Bachmann's existential threat in '14

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann may be the congresswoman with nine lives. But 2014 could be the gravest threat to her political career yet.

The bomb-throwing conservative and onetime Republican presidential candidate is girding for what promises to be a ferocious reelection contest. Awaiting Bachmann is a serious Democratic opponent who has the full backing of his national party and a suburban Twin Cities electorate that six months ago nearly tossed her out of office.


The most glaring problem for Bachmann, though, may be a swirl of investigations into her campaign finances. The Federal Election Commission and the Office of Congressional Ethics are investigating whether her campaign concealed payments to an Iowa state senator who did work for her 2012 presidential bid. (A state ethics law bars senators from doing paid campaign work.)

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And late last week, Minnpost.com reported that the FBI would be joining the investigation and interviewing a former Bachmann chief of staff.

Aiming to capitalize on the controversy, Democrat Jim Graves has launched a rematch against Bachmann after coming within 5,000 votes — 1.2 percentage points — – of unseating her in 2012. Graves, a wealthy hotel company executive, raised more than $100,000 during the first week of his candidacy — a mind-boggling figure for a House candidate.

On Monday, he released a poll showing him heading into Round 2 with a narrow lead over the four-term congresswoman.

In an interview, Graves boasted that he is the front-runner in the race and argued that Minnesotans are tiring of Bachmann’s soundbite-friendly approach.

“At the end of the day, you have someone with a skill set who knows how to bridge differences and knows the art of the deal versus someone who hasn’t done much and isn’t very effective in anything she’s done,” he said. “People want someone who can get something done.”

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Dan Kotman, a Bachmann spokesman, declined to comment on the campaign finance inquiries other than to say they did not directly target the congresswoman, who, he said, “has done absolutely nothing wrong.”

National Democrats showed little interest last year in trying to take out Bachmann. Her district had broken decisively for Republicans in recent presidential elections, the thinking went, and she had raised tons of cash from her legion of tea party admirers. And Graves was an untested political neophyte who had launched his candidacy on the fly, about six months before the election.

This year, party operatives say, is different.

After providing Graves with just about no help in 2012, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has taken a renewed interest in his candidacy. The DCCC has promoted Graves to an initiative for top recruits, and the candidate was in Washington last week to huddle with party strategists.

( PHOTOS: Michele Bachmann’s career)

“Michele Bachmann is not only the face of what is wrong with this dysfunctional Congress, she is one of the major forces behind its obstruction and chaos,” DCCC Chairman Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) wrote in an email. “Her out-of-touch policies underscore the need to replace Congresswoman Bachmann with an independent businessperson who knows how to create jobs and move the country forward, and we’re committed to keeping this race in play.”

Bachmann declined to be interviewed for this story. Kotman, her spokesman, said: “It’s 18 months out, and she isn’t focused on the campaign. She’s focused on the district.”

Democrats have tried to knock off Bachmann before — each time she’s run for reelection, in fact. But they’re positively giddy over the campaign finance investigations, saying they give hope that 2014 will finally be the year she goes down.

House Majority PAC, a prominent Democratic super PAC that has made the congresswoman one of its top 10 targets, released a Web video declaring, “It’s been a tough couple of weeks for Michele Bachmann.”

“I think the key is what these investigations conclude and when they do,” said Scott Cottington, a Republican strategist in the state and a former top National Republican Congressional Committee staffer. “If they run the traps and she’s not tagged, that’s good for her. If she is, that’s a problem.”

Bachmann’s political standing at home has been tenuous before, despite occupying a district that tilts conservative. In 2008, weeks after a damaging TV appearance in which she said then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama “may have anti-American views,” she defeated her Democratic foe by just 3 percentage points.

And then came her 2012 race against Graves, when she found herself on defense over skipping congressional votes in order to wage a quixotic presidential campaign.

In one sign of her precarious standing, Bachmann recently began running TV commercials highlighting her role in sponsoring legislation to repeal Obama’s health care bill — an unusually early time in the election season to start airing ads. And Republicans say they’re assured by the congresswoman’s busy in-district schedule — as of late, she seems more focused on holding town halls than on making headlines.

“She is working harder in the district than she has in the past,” said Ron Carey, a former Bachmann chief of staff. “It’s going to be harder to make the case that she’s an AWOL congresswoman.”

“You don’t see her every night on Fox News,” he said. “She’s not trying to build her profile like she was when she was running for president.”

Still, Graves’s road to unseating Bachmann is a narrow one. Without Obama on the ballot, he could have a harder time motivating Democratic voters to come out to the polls.

And for all of Bachmann’s vulnerabilities, she has the benefit of running in a 6th District that’s the most conservative in the state. If conservative anger at Obama boils over, as it did in 2010, Bachmann — who has led the tea party charge in the House and is perhaps the administration’s most pointed congressional critic — will be in a position to exploit it.

In a district where the national Democratic Party remains unpopular and Mitt Romney received 56 percent of the vote, Bachmann has begun running a Web video that intersperses images of Graves with those of Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. It’s an approach similar to the one now-GOP Rep. Mark Sanford employed with success in the recent special election for a conservative South Carolina congressional seat.

Graves has pushed back, calling himself a moderate and pointing out that he has, at times, criticized Obama. The Democrat has recently questioned the White House’s handling of the IRS, Benghazi and Associated Press phone records scandals.

“They’re going to try to say that Jim Graves is a stand-in for the status quo,” he said. “But it’s not going to resonate."