Johnston Woman Sues Michele Bachmann, Former Campaign Aide

A Johnston campaign aide for former Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann sued the Minnesota congresswoman and her senior campaign aides on Monday, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, claiming an official stole a private email list and that the Johnston woman was blamed for its use.

The lawsuit filed by Barb Heki of Johnston claims that Bachmann's Iowa campaign chairman, state Sen. Kent Sorenson, took the list from Heki's private computer to promote Bachmann's candidacy among Christian home-school advocates before the Iowa caucuses. Heki was hired to coordinate home-school supporters for Bachmann's Iowa campaign, the newspaper said.

Phone messages left for Bachmann and Sorenson, of Indianola, weren't returned Monday. The lawsuit was filed in Polk County District Court.

Heki had been a board member for the Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators for 10 years, and had worked as a top home-school volunteer for Republican Mike Huckabee's winning Iowa caucus campaign in 2008.

Heki's lawsuit claims that Sorenson took a database from her private computer in November that contained names and contact information, including email addresses, of thousands of Iowa families who were part of the Iowa home-school network on whose board she served. Court papers said she had told Sorenson earlier that she would not provide the list to the campaign.

When an email from the campaign was sent to members of the network, Heki was named in media reports as providing the list. She was later removed from the boards of the Iowa network and a national network of home-school advocates on which she served, the paper said.

Sorenson abruptly left the Bachmann campaign a week before the caucuses to back Ron Paul.

Bachmann won the Iowa GOP presidential straw poll last August, but she finished fifth in the January caucuses and dropped out of the race.