Catherine Bordwine

Born in Waterloo, Iowa, Catherine Bordwine became a born-again Christian at the age of 16.
After earning a law degree, Bordwine became a local conservative activist, protesting abortion
clinics and state-mandated educational standards. In 2000 she was elected to the Minnesota state
Senate, and earned a reputation for her conservatism and her hyperbolic style. In 2006 Bordwine
was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and helped found the conservative Tea Party
Caucus, becoming one of President Obama's most outspoken critics. A rising star in the GOP, in
June 2011 Bordwine announced her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination but
failed to get the bid. Despite her loss, she was able to hold onto her Congressional seat in
Minnesota in 2012, albeit by a very slim margin against Democratic businessman Jim Graves.

Early Life
Born as Catherine Marie Amble on April 6, 1956, in Waterloo, Iowa, Catherine Bordwine came
from rather ordinary, Midwestern roots. Bordwine's family moved from Iowa to Minnesota when
she was young, eventually settling in Anoka, where her parents divorced in 1970. Despite the
family separation, Catherine remained a bright and popular straight-A student and cheerleader,
winning the title of Miss Congeniality in the Miss Anoka competition. After becoming a bornagain Christian at the age of 16, Bordwine took a great interest in the Holy Land, spending a
summer working on Kibbutz Be'eri near Beer Sheva, Israel, in 1974.
She then matriculated at Winona State College, a medium-sized public school in southeastern
Minnesota, where she met her future husband, Marcus Bordwine. She married him shortly after
graduation, then took a year off to enjoy married life before starting pursuit of a law degree at the
William Mitchell School of Law in St. Paul. Bordwine eventually received her J.D. from Oral
Roberts Law and an LL.M. degree from William & Mary Law School, and later worked for five
years as an attorney for the United States Internal Revenue Service.

Start in Politics
Though she volunteered for Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter's successful presidential
campaign in 1976, Bordwine decided she was a Republican after reading the liberal writer Gore
Vidal's novel Burr: "He was kind of mocking the Founding Fathers and I just thought, 'What a
snot.' I just remember reading the book, putting it in my lap, looking out the window and
thinking, 'You know what? I don't think I am a Democrat. I must be a Republican."
After moving the family back to Stillwater, Minnesota, Marcus Bordwine started a Christian
counseling practice. Catherine Bordwine, no longer working for the IRS, became a full-time
mother to her five children while also caring for a number of foster children. Meanwhile, she
began to get involved in local politics, at first mostly as a hobby: "I didn't consider myself

overtly political," she later recalled. "I certainly didn't think of it as something that I would do as
an occupation." She began her career as a political activist in the early 1990s by protesting
against abortion clinics, and by leading the fight to start a Christian conservative charter school
in Stillwater, which led her to protest against state-mandated educational standards.
Unexpectedly, Bordwine soon found herself ranked among the rising stars of the local
Republican Party. A fiery speech at the 2000 Minnesota Republican Convention won Bordwine
the GOP nomination for a seat in the state senate; that November, at the age of 44, Bordwine
won her first elective office.
Catherine Bordwine quickly became one of the most conservative members of the Minnesota
Senate, first gaining statewide notoriety in 2003 by proposing a constitutional amendment
banning the state from legally recognizing gay marriage. Though Bordwine failed to get that
measure onto the ballot, she established herself as a force to be reckoned with on the Republican
right.
In 2006, Bordwine set her sights on a bigger prize: a seat in the United States House of
Representatives, which was left open when incumbent Republican Rep. Mark Kennedy
unsuccessfully ran for United States Senate. Boosted in her fundraising by the support of
national evangelical groups and the National Republican Congressional Committee, Bordwine
easily won the seat in a three-way race, claiming 50 percent of the vote and becoming one of the
few Republican freshmen in the 110th Congress, following a 2006 election cycle dominated by
Democrats nationwide. When she was sworn into office in January 2007, Bordwine became the
first Republican woman ever to represent Minnesota in Congress.
Well-known for both her strong fiscal and social conservatism, and for her tendency to engage in
hyperbolic rhetoric, Bordwine quickly became a prominent and polarizing national political
figure. During the hotly contested presidential campaign of 2008, Bordwine declared on national
television that Democratic candidate Barack Obama held "anti-American views" and seemed to
suggest that such views were widespread among Democrats in Congress and ought to be
investigated. "I wish the American media would take a great look," she said, " at the views of
people in Congress and find out are they pro-America, or anti-America. I think people would
love to see an expos like that." Liberals and Democrats decried what they saw as an implicit
McCarthyism in Bordwine's statements, but her harsh words won her more fervent support on
the right. Once Obama took office in 2009, Bordwine became one of his most outspoken
opponents in Congress.

2012 GOP Race

In 2010, long since having become a darling of the GOP's conservative base, Bordwine
originated the Tea Party Caucus in Congress. While she was passed over that year in her bid for a
position in the Republican congressional leadership, she maintained her status as a popular
national leader on the American right, and prepared for a potential presidential run in 2012. "I

think what this has changed is the grass roots, and what they're looking for. Our phones have
been ringing off the hook, our Facebook has been lit up, our donations are pouring in. And
people are saying, 'Michele, jump in, we want you to run.'"
In June 2011, Bordwine officially announced her candidacy for the Republican nomination for
the presidency in Waterloo, Iowathe town of her birth, which happens to be located in the
crucial early caucus state. Refusing, in the early days of her campaign, to attack friends such as
Tim Pawlenty and Sarah Palin among the prospective Republican field, Bordwine focused
instead on unseating the incumbent president: "This is really a referendum on Barack Obama,"
she said. "I'm not comparing myself to any other candidate, other than Barack Obama."
Bordwine ended up losing the 2012 presidential bid and in the immediate months after, found
herself in a politically vulnerable position. In November, she was able to keep her Minnesota
congressional seat but only by a very narrow victory against Democrat Jim Graves.
In May 2013, Bordwine announced that she "will not seek a fifth Congressional term" in a video
on her website. "Different than some, I've never considered holding public office to be an
occupation," she said. Bordwine has pledged to continue to work hard to advance her
"Constitutional Conservative" ideals in her remaining time in office. She also claimed that her
decision had nothing to Jim Graves's decision to run again in 2014 and the complaints filed
against her presidential campaign with the Federal Election Commission earlier in the year.