The first lady is not interested in running for the Senate or any other office. Sen. Michelle Obama? No way

Michelle Obama will not be following in Hillary Clinton’s footsteps.

Despite recurring rumors to the contrary — the freshest of which emerged last week — the first lady is not interested in running for the Senate or any other office. She never has been and she never will be, Obama and people close to her have said repeatedly.


“She is as likely to put her name in contention to be the next pope as she is to run for political office,” her former communications director, Kristina Schake, said Tuesday in the latest denial from the first lady’s orbit.

Still, the rumblings won’t die.

The most recent FLOTUS-for-Senate buzz came from Orbmagazine, which offered a thinly sourced report last week that Obama “is being urged, nay IMPLORED, by her husband’s supporters to move to California and run for the U.S. Senate seat that will become open” if Sen. Dianne Feinstein chooses not to run for reelection in 2018, the year that she turns 85. From there, it spread to Page Six of the New York Post and then to a question posed to Feinstein during an appearance Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

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“I’m flattered if that should be true,” Feinstein said. “Somehow I do not believe it is true. But I would be flattered if it were.” Feinstein hasn’t even decided if she’ll run again, saying Sunday that she has “no idea” if she’ll try for a fourth full term in 2018.

Those closest to Obama, however, do have an idea about her future: She will not be seeking office.

“The first lady will be active but not in the United States Senate!,” emailed Anita Dunn, a former White House communications director who’s close to the East Wing. Another Democrat close to Obama conveyed the same sentiment. “The first lady is not running for office,” the source said.

President Barack Obama has also offered categorical denials. “One thing I can promise you is that Michelle will not run for office,” he said in May on “Live with Kelly and Michael.”

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The first lady’s time on the campaign trail this fall has offered a reminder that while she’s reluctantly agreed to take on a bigger role in the 2014 elections than she has in any previous cycle in which her husband has not been on the ballot, she’s campaigning out of duty, not the passion for politics that drives him or people like Clinton.

More popular than her husband, Obama has been dispatched to more politically sensitive races in less-Democratic states than the president himself was welcomed to, including Iowa and Colorado. But her appearances earned her less than rave reviews.

Last week, while campaigning for Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, Obama offered up a part of his opponent’s biography as his. Earlier in the month, she referred to the Iowa Democrat running for Senate as “Bruce Bailey,” though his last name is actually Braley.

Obama’s delivery of some of her stump speeches has betrayed that she doesn’t want to fake enthusiasm for candidates or issues about which she’s not passionate. That’s why she’s focused much of her official energy on policies that help children and why, after some mishaps early in her time in the White House, the first lady has insisted that aides make a comprehensive case for why she’s needed to help a particular candidate.

In fact, she doesn’t fake enthusiasm for politics, period. She has for years denied any interest in running for office, and her disdain for politicking and for much of Washington is hardly a secret. She was reluctant to support her husband’s political career but backed him because she believed in him and what he could accomplish. She’s been most passionate and active on the campaign trail when stumping for him, and when she sees a direct connection between her efforts and his goals.

Yet as the president’s approval has fallen to the low- to mid-40s, the first lady’s has hovered around 60 percent, one reason why tongues keep wagging. And it’s easy to see why the first lady would be a Democratic recruiter’s dream. She has near-universal name recognition, high favorability ratings and the ability to engage women, African-Americans and young people. She has a track record of speaking to crowds of thousands and of charming small gatherings of high-dollar donors.

“She is smart, popular and effective, so people are rightfully hopeful about it, but it is just not where her passion lies,” Schake said. “She cares deeply about making a difference and will continue to do so after leaving the White House, but will do it in her own way, not through running for office.”

Democratic pollster Celinda Lake also said the interest in understandable. “It’s natural to think that she would be extraordinarily viable in whatever state they move back to.”

So the rumblings have made it to two of the Obamas’ most likely post-2017 home states. (Notably, though, the state seen as their most likely next stop — New York — hasn’t made it into the gossip columns, in large part because Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand are expected to stay put for many years to come.)

Before the discussion about California came a few rounds of chatter about the first lady’s political future back in Illinois, where some Democrats see her as the strongest challenger to Republican Sen. Mark Kirk. Fifty-one percent of Illinois voters surveyed in December 2012 by Public Policy Polling said they would vote for her in the 2016 Senate race, while 40 percent said they would back Kirk.

Kirk has tried to capitalize on the suggestions coming from the “press and rumor mills” about a potential Obama campaign, writing in a September fundraising email that while, “I’m not one to believe rumors or engage in political gossip … when it comes to defending the Illinois Senate seat that I’m honored to hold, I take all potential threats seriously.”

Instead of challenging Kirk, Obama is expected to play a key role in shaping the mission of her husband’s presidential library and other post-presidential initiatives and maintain the same focus on children and young adults that has anchored her White House work.

But knowing all too well that potential candidates’ public denials don’t necessarily preclude their eventual campaigns — see Barack Obama’s November 2004 vow to serve a full term in the Senate and not to run for president in 2008 — reporters keep trying to get the first lady to take the bait.

Asked by ABC’s Robin Roberts in June if her “next act” would be political, Obama acted surprised. “Me?” she asked. “No, it will definitely not be political,” she answered, as Roberts pressed her again. “No, it definitely will not be. It will be mission-based, it will be service-focused.”

Clinton’s post-White House political career hasn’t done much to slow the Obama rumors and might even stoke them. But it was long clear that Clinton had political aspirations of her own and that she enjoyed politics in a way that Obama doesn’t.

“Hillary loves politics, she loves policy, she loves all of it,” said columnist Connie Schultz, who has experience as a political spouse, since she’s married to Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. With Obama, it’s clear “this is not her thing.”

Schultz chafes under the implication that women can only follow the path their husbands have already forged.

“The assumption is that the only way for Michelle Obama to get involved is to follow in her husband’s footsteps,” she said. “What decade are we living in?”