Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann is taking steps to form an exploratory committee to run for president in 2012, CNN reports.

Bachmann, a third-term Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, could file the papers for the exploratory committee by June and then formally announce her presidential campaign, the report said.

This week, ex-Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty became the first major GOP presidential candidate to form such a committee for a White House bid.

The CNN report suggests Bachmann's timetable is being driven, in part, by a set of early presidential debates that begin in May. Doug Sachtleben in Bachmann's congressional office sent this statement in response to a USA TODAY request:

The Congresswoman is grateful for all the encouragement she's received. She will make a decision about 2012 this summer. There is a natural timeline to these events and they will run their course.

Bachmann, a tax lawyer and mother of five children, is the founder of the Tea Party Caucus in the U.S. House and a frequent critic of the nation's health care law. In recent weeks, she has been sounding out voters in her native state of Iowa and other states such as New Hampshire and South Carolina that are key to the presidential primary process.

During a recent trip to New Hampshire, Bachmann flubbed a fact about the Revolutionary War and mistakenly told her audience that the battles of Lexington and Concord were in the Granite State.

Bachmann, 54, falls somewhere in the middle of the pack when it comes to name recognition among potential GOP presidential candidates. More than half of Republicans and independent-leaning Republicans know who she is, according to a recent Gallup Poll. By comparison, Sarah Palin has a name ID of 97%.

A prodigious fundraiser, Bachmann raised more than $13 million to win re-election in November in her suburban Twin Cities district. It was the most expensive race for the U.S. House last year, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

(Contributing: Jackie Kucinich, Alan Gomez)