Making the case as to why she should be considered for the 2012 Republican nomination for president, the Minnesota representative told Fox News last week, “I have been able to raise more money than any member of the House of Representatives in the history of the United States Congress,” according to The Washington Post’s ‘Fact Checker blog.

The Post found that Bachmann raised more money in the 2009-2010 election cycle than any other House member, bringing in $13.5 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics; her contributions came mostly from individuals, 50 percent of whom contributed $200 or less.

“Bachmann is a prodigious fundraiser, but once again her talent for hyperbole has stretched the truth a bit,” writes the Post’s Glenn Kessler. ”Her statement would have been accurate if she had added the words ‘in an election cycle.’ But instead she choose to make a sweeping statement that, as of yet, is not quite true.”

Using CRP data, the Post found that Bachmann is in fourth place in terms of total fundraising by current House members, though those figures do not include money raised from leadership Political Action Committees:

• Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio): $26.4 million
• Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.): $21.7 million
• Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.): $20.5 million
• Bachmann: $19.6 million
• Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.): $18.5 million
• Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.): $17.6 million
• Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.): $12.5 million.

Editor: For more of the American Independent News Network’s coverage of reaction to the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, visit The American Independent.

Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head Saturday afternoon at a Congressional meet and greet in her Tucson district.

Doctors says the shot went through her head, through her brain and out the other side. She has undergone surgery and is currently listed in critical condition. Police say at least 18 were shot during the attack, and five of them have been confirmed dead by hospital officials. The shooting victim are hospitalized in serious or critical condition.

Police have identified a suspect, naming 22-year-old Jared Loughner. Loughner, of Tucson appears to have a YouTube video channel on which he has posted videos of burning U.S. flags. He lists among his favorite books classics such as Alice in Wonderland, as well as the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf.

Giffords was targeted by Sarah Palin in the Novemeber election because she supported health care reform legislation. Giffords’ district was one of the districts Palin’s PAC marked with a rifle sight on itsFacebook Page.

“We’ll aim for these races and many others,” the site said. “This is just the first salvo in a fight to elect people across the nation who will bring common sense to Washington.”

Michigan Tea Party Activists, meanwhile, were quick to distance themselves from the shooting.

Gene Clem sent a message to the Southwest Michigan Tea Party Patriots Facebook group:

This shooting in AZ seems to be an act by a deranged individual as of this time (4:30 pm EST, 8Jan). The main stream media is bent on bringing the Tea Party into the story. There is nothing to indicate that any Tea Party organization is behind this and to even hint that there is, is ludicrous. …

Please pray for those wounded and the families of those killed today. And pray for our nation and our local and federal leaders that they be guided by God’s Truth.

While police have the alleged gunman in custody, there has been no statement from investigators as to what motivated the shooter.

Giffords served on the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus. That group released a statement about the shooting.

“Congresswoman Giffords’ support for our LGBT family has never faltered. After coming off of one of the closest races in the most recent election cycle, one in which she was criticized for her support of equality issues, she didn’t hesitate for a moment to support the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’. She has stood with us unrelentingly and in this sad time we stand with her. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Congresswoman, her staff and their families,” said LGBT Congressional Staff Association President, Chris Crowe.

The Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT organization based in D.C., also released a statement about the shooting from group President Joe Solomonese:

“We are shocked and saddened by the events involving Congresswoman Giffords and our hearts go out to her and the other victims of this awful tragedy. Gabby Giffords is a champion for LGBT equality and a principled leader for Arizona. We wish her a speedy recovery as our thoughts and prayers are with her family as well as with the families of all of those touched by today’s horrific violence.”

The report states:

Overall Latinos represent a greater share of eligible voter and resident populations in states that will gain seats than they do in states that will lose seats. Among eligible voters, in states that will gain seats 15.2% are Latino, while in states that will lose seats just 5.4% are Latino. Among resident populations, 23.6% is Latino in states that will gain seats compared with 8.4% in states that will lose seats.

In Texas, Latinos account for one-in-four (25.5%) of the state’s eligible voters and 36.9% of the state’s population. In Florida, Latinos account for one-in-seven (15%) of the state’s eligible voters and 21.5% of the state’s population. And in Arizona and Nevada, Hispanics represent 19.7% and 14.1% of eligible voters respectively.

The report points out that in Florida, 48 percent of Latinos, 80 percent of  whites and a little over 63 percent of blacks are eligible to vote. Nationwide, less than half of all Hispanics are eligible to vote either because they are under 18 years of age or are not citizens.

Despite historic victories for Hispanic Republicans in the midterm elections, Latino voters continued to favor Democrats (64 percent) while 34 percent voted Republican.

As their numbers continue to grow, Latino voters will play a larger role in U.S. elections. In Florida, a swing state in recent presidential elections, Latinos favored then-Democratic candidate Barack Obama over Republican John McCain in 2008.

Because the group is registered as a 501(c)4 nonprofit, it is not regulated by the Federal Elections Commission or the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board. And unlike other politically active organizations, it is also not mandated to disclose where it gets its funding.

In 2010, AFF spent its money exclusively attacking Democratic candidates around the country. It’s biggest investment came in the race to unseat U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa). The group spent spent more than $1.8 million, a sum higher than either candidate in the race raised independently. Braley ended up emerging victorious despite the group’s heavy investment.

Both Democrats and Republicans have discussed tightening the state’s disclosure laws to force groups like American Future Fund — and it’s sister organization The Progress Project — to disclose donors if they spend money in state-level campaigns. Even Gov.-elect Terry Branstad has said he’d like to see groups that spend money trying to influence campaigns forced to disclose where they are getting their money.

But many of Branstad’s key advisers are closely associated with AFF, and Branstad himself served as chairman of American Future Fund’s Lecture Series before re-entering politics. Among those in Branstad’s inner circle with ties to AFF are:

• Bruce Rastetter – ethanol businessman and co-chair of Branstad’s inaugural committee. He was the governor’s largest donor, and provided the seed money to start American Future Fund.
• Nick Ryan – a founder of AFF and founder and president of the Concordia Group LLC (AFF paid Concordia $300,000 in 2008). Ryan was one of Branstad’s biggest financial contributors and is a long-time adviser to Rastetter.
• Sandy Greiner — president of AFF and leader of a political action committee that successfully worked to encourage Branstad to jump back into politics. She won a seat in the state Senate last month. Before the election, Greiner said her association with AFF would only be a conflict of interest if she won. She has yet to resign her position since the November election.
• Nicole Schlinger — past president of AFF who led Branstad’s fundraising efforts.
• Tim Albrecht– Branstad’s communication director who previously served in the same position with AFF.
• Kathy Pearson – secretary of The Progress Project and a member of Branstad’s Linn County campaign committee.
• David Kochel – past president of The Progress Project and formerly deputy manager of Branstad’s 1994 gubernatorial campaign. He did some consulting for Branstad’s most recent campaign as well.

The three groups — Public Citizen, Protect Our Elections and the Center for Media and Democracy — filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission in October asking for an investigation into whether American Future Fund should register as a political action committee.

Calling it “Christine PAC” for now, she described it as “the new kind” of PAC that will allow her to endorse candidates, do independent expenditures in certain races, lobby on issues and do things “that other activist organizations have the handcuffs on because of the IRS.”

The super PAC, a creation of recent court decisions and Federal Election Commission opinions, can raise unlimited amounts of money and run independent expenditures for or against candidates, and their donors have to be disclosed. Seventy-two super PACs were formed for this past election cycle, and spent $83.7 million in the elections. Examples include Karl Rove-affiliated American Crossroads or Dick Morris’ Super PAC for America.

Sarah Palin’s PAC, SarahPAC, is a leadership PAC, so it has a $5,000 limit on contributions and expenditures to candidates or other PACs.

“Americans are practical on immigration issues,” David Mermin, a partner at Lake Research Partners, said in a press release. “Americans support comprehensive immigration reform as a practical solution, even among a cranky electorate this year. Republican leaders thinking they have a  mandate to pursue enforcement-only approaches are really mistaken.”

In the poll, interestingly, most members of both parties said they supported comprehensive immigration reform — even before they were given a description of what it would entail. After a description, support rose even higher: 72 percent of Republicans said they strongly supported it, versus 68 percent of Democrats.

Most people in both parties said border security should be tackled at the same time as other immigration issues and that deporting all of the illegal immigrants in the country would be unrealistic.

Of course, those views are different from the ones held by most of the Republicans voted into office last Tuesday. The next session’s House GOP leaders on immigration issues, Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Steve King (R-Iowa), have advocated enforcement-first approaches to immigration, and many other Republicans in the House and Senate claim nothing can be done on immigration until the border becomes more secure.

Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, a group that advocates stricter immigration enforcement, claimed in its post-election analysis that the election results proved widespread support for enforcement-first immigration efforts and “opposition to the Obama Administration’s version of ‘comprehensive’ immigration reform.” In the exit poll results the group released last week, most voters agreed when asked if “President Obama has not been aggressive enough in enforcing immigration laws.”

America’s Voice claims its results indicate that most people support comprehensive immigration reform — even under the Democratic definition — but voted based on economic issues instead. Very few people polled from either party — 3 percent of both Democrats and Republicans, and just 1 percent of independents — said immigration was the most important issue they considered when choosing a candidate.

“The American people are out in front of the politicians on this issue,” Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, said in a press release. “There’s a vocal and visible anti-immigrant minority that makes some politicians believe they speak for the majority. As this polling makes clear, they don’t.”

[T]he new policy makes no provision for the many voters who cast protest votes. Prior to the election, people commented on radio stations and in the comment sections in blogs and newspaper stories that they would deliberately incorrectly write-in a variation of “Murkowski” as a protest. They did so knowing that Murkowski was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a “spelling bee” campaign, replete with wrist bands, pencils and tattoos, all to educate the voters on proper spelling. Why was this done? Because even Murkowski had read the law and knew that it required proper spelling — “No exceptions.” So protest voters were trying to send a message to the candidate. The state has failed to create any guideline or standard that would account for the intent of the voter who intentionally cast a protest vote.

Marshall finds this argument pretty laughable, and at least from a legal standpoint, it would seem unlikely to hold water. Elections law expert Rick Hasen, however, thinks that Miller’s camp does have a few good arguments it could make — the most promising being a “due process claim” that argues the candidate’s rights were violated by a change in elections rules in the middle of the election.

It makes sense for advocates to reiterate that Latino support for Democrats should not be taken for granted: It’s how they can motivate politicians to act on issues important to them. For the most part, it seems unlikely that pro-immigration reform Latino voters would vote for Republicans who oppose paths to citizenship, even if Democrats don’t move on passing reform. But the Politico story mentions one interesting option for the GOP to garner more Latino support: Nominate Marco Rubio for president.

Rubio, a Republican who won Florida’s senate race last week, is Cuban-American and received a large portion of the Latino vote in the state. A poll of Latino registered voters the night before the election found 62 percent planned to vote for Rubio — far higher levels than for Republican candidates in other states.

Politico reports that Republican leaders are considering pushing for Rubio to run for president partially to challenge Obama’s support among Latinos:

His campaign could be their template. The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio advertised heavily on Spanish-language television, broadcasting his personal story as the centerpiece of an inspirational message to Hispanics.

Similar to former President George W. Bush, Rubio spoke about his opposition to legalization “in a respectful and empathetic tone, focusing on law-and-order aspects and not using people who cross the border illegally as political punching bags,” said Ana Navarro, a Miami-based Republican strategist and adviser to Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Of course, there are a few potential problems with the strategy. Rubio will be only two years into his first Senate term in 2012, meaning he would have served even less time in the chamber than Obama did before he was elected.

Beyond that, it may not make sense to extrapolate much out of the high Latino support for Rubio last week. Florida’s Latino population often displays different trends from Latino voters nationwide because it is largely made up of Cuban-Americans, who can easily gain citizenship if they come to the United States, and Puerto Ricans, who are born citizens. These groups typically place immigration concerns lower and vote for Republicans more often than Latinos in the country overall. Rubio actually lost to Democrat Kendrick Meek among non-Cuban Latino voters in Florida, according to a pre-election poll.

Rubio also saw few challenges during the campaign over his immigration positions, a Democratic pollster told Politico. He may have lost some support among Latinos if his conservative views on immigration had been more widely known. He advocated border security, steered clear of controversy over Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration crackdown and focused most of his Spanish-language messaging on his background as the son of immigrants. In a drawn-out political race, though, the strategy may be more difficult.

In New Hampshire, for instance, seniors backed GOP Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte over her Democratic challenger by 33 points. In the narrow Illinois Senate contest, Republican Mark Kirk won older voters by 22 points. And In Delaware, they were the only age group to back tea party favorite Christine O’Donnell, by an 11-point margin.

“I’ve been saying since August 2009, that there was a tsunami — in this case a senior citizen tsunami — headed towards Capitol Hill,” said Jim Martin, chairman of the 60 Plus Association, a conservative campaign group targeted toward older voters. “That tsunami came ashore.”

The 60 Plus Association, it should be noted, played a key role, along with groups like American Crossroads, in drumming up fears among the elderly about the health care reform bill’s efforts to fight the rising cost of Medicare — a cause that Republicans had long championed but now found opportune to decry. Billing itself a conservative alternative to the AARP, the 60 Plus Association served in many ways as an extension of the American Crossroads-led network of shadow GOP organizations devoted to electing Republicans last election cycle. Carl Forti, a veteran Republican operative and the political director of American Crossroads, also handled the PR and media profile of the 60 Plus group, which spent nearly $6 million dollars in independent expenditures attacking House Democrats who voted for health care reform.

Combine the swing among seniors with the fact that young people largely stayed home from the polls last Tuesday, and the landslide seem less like a shift in the national opinion and more like the product of simple demographic mathematics. Here’s a voter turnout graph Matt Yglesias provided last week, which speaks to this point:

If the recount process and subsequent litigation drag out through the beginning of 2011, current Gov. Tim Pawlenty will remain in office until a winner is certified. After Republicans gained control of both the state House and Senate on Tuesday, a prolonged recount battle and continual lawsuits could play to the GOP’s favor, allowing the legislature to pass conservative bills with a friendly face in the governor’s mansion before Dayton could possibly take the seat.

Pawlenty’s office did not return requests for comment on the article, but the governor addressed questions from the state press corps late Thursday afternoon. He once again affirmed he will not abdicate his role if no winner is declared by Jan. 3 — the date when the next governor is currently scheduled to assume office — but stayed mostly mum on the details of how he would operate if that situation occurs.

“In the event that it goes beyond Jan. 3, and again I hope it does not, then I will address matters as they arise and as they need to be addressed but obviously we will just be addressing those things as they need to be addressed and as they arise,” Pawlenty said in his opening remarks at the press conference. He continued to use the same language in response to most of the questions posed to him. He continually hedged and never satisfyingly defined what he meant with his most frequently used term, “arise.”

“If an emergency were to take place for example and I needed to call in the national guard I would certainly do that, or respond to an emergency. If something were presented to me that required action or lack of action or a signature or a decision, I would certainly undertake that,” Pawlenty said.

So Pawlenty himself might not push new legislation — at least not publicly — during this potential period of limbo, but a newly empowered Republican majority might not hold the same reservations. Based on Pawlenty’s statement on signatures and decisions, it seems he has not ruled out signing new bills that come across his desk. The conservative legislature could become proactive, passing numerous conservative bills that a Gov. Dayton would be inclined to veto.

Even if the House and Senate decide to wait until the recount concludes to begin crafting their legislation, Pawlenty would quickly face key decisions if his stay in the governor’s mansion continues through January. The governor must present a budget in early February, and as part of a deal between Republicans and Democrats during the last legislative session, there is a Jan. 15 deadline for the next governor to decide whether to opt-in to an early Medicaid enrollment program with the federal government. That choice would fall to Pawlenty if litigation prolongs the recount.

At the press conference, the governor reasserted his opposition to the program, indicating that the state would not accept the funds if he remains in office. “I’ve already made that decision as for me and my administration and as long as I’m here that will remain,” Pawlenty said. He pointed out that despite the current deadline, the legislative body has the option of changing it.

“It’s in the hands of the next legislature and the next governor to alter that in any way that they want,” he said. However, a Republican controlled House and Senate would be unlikely to allow any governor to have that choice again.

While Pawlenty was less than clear about how he will act if his tenure is extend, the governor did clearly state his preference for the recount situation to be resolved by the beginning of 2011. “I earnestly, genuinely, sincerely hope this is resolved by Jan. 3. It is not in anyone’s best interest to have this spill over and have a holdover situation. I hope that doesn’t happen, but in the unlikely event that it does, I will fulfill the responsibilities as required by the constitution. Not because I want to, but because I am required to,” Pawlenty said.

Prolonging his stay in office may be beneficial to implementing policies favored by state Republicans, but it could also interfere with the timing of Pawlenty’s probable 2012 presidential bid.

Whether Pawlenty gets his wish of leaving office in two months will be decided by the state parties, and whether they choose to file lawsuits challenging the results of the recount. On Friday, the secretary of state released a proposed time line for any possible recount. The process would begin on Nov. 29, and results would be settled by Dec. 14. That would leave little time for a gubernatorial transition, but would still allow Pawlenty to leave office on schedule. But with such high stakes in the race, either party is likely to extend the recount process through litigation, dragging the ordeal into 2011.

MPR captured video of the whole press conference:

Pawlenty preser on transition from tommy scheck on Vimeo.

Patrick Caldwell is a reporter for The American Independent.