By Ben Solis, Michigan Advance
Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers has indicated that he wants to sit on the upper chamber’s banking committee, which deals in key regulation and oversight of the banking and financial sector, if elected in November.
His most recent Federal Election Commission reports, however, show that the White Lake Republican has collected millions of dollars in 2026 campaign contributions from the very people he would regulate and oversee on that committee, raising questions over how that money could influence his decisions if Michigan voters put Rogers back in Congress.
Historical campaign finance records also show that Rogers’ campaign donations from the banking sector go all the way back to his time in the U.S. House of Representatives as well as his stint prior to that in the state Legislature. The reports all detail a cozy campaign donor relationship between Rogers and banking and investment industry figures.
That relationship has a sharpened focus after the Washington Examiner reported in February that Rogers, speaking on behalf of his housing affordability initiative, “said he would love to get a seat on the banking committee if he wins in November.”
During his time in the Michigan Senate, Rogers supported legislation that eliminated credit caps and allowed for higher fees to be charged to Michigan residents, ultimately benefiting his wealthy bank and investment industry donors.
Michigan Advance asked Rogers’ campaign if his multi-million dollar donations from the banking industry would curry his favor when writing or supporting pro-banking industry legislation as a U.S. Senator, or if it would color his judgment when deciding on new regulations for that industry if he beats the Democratic Party nominee this year and is indeed installed to the U.S. Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.
The question is important, the Advance told the Rogers campaign, because the committee has a responsibility to regulate banking, insurance and financial markets, as well as a duty to provide oversight over securities, housing, urban development and mass transit. International trading, finance and economic policy are also in the committee’s legislative and regulatory purview.
Of note, the committee oversees the Federal Reserve, which has come under intense scrutiny from President Donald Trump, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is charged with compelling the financial industry to act honestly and ethically.
Rogers campaign spokesperson Alyssa Brouillet said that “anyone who donates to Mike’s campaign does so because they want to support his mission, not the other way around.”
“Look, we know the Democrats love their quid pro quos, but Mike Rogers couldn’t be more different,” Brouillet said.
Brouillet said Rogers was one of several U.S. House Republicans who voted twice against the Troubled Asset Relief Program, often referred to as the Wall Street bailout following the financial recession of 2008, when the bill was being approved by Congress that year.
Still, Rogers past and present campaign finance disclosures raise questions over whether he could be completely impartial to the financial industry, especially considering his votes on other key legislation.
Rogers committee, joint fundraising wing flushed with banking industry dollars
A year-end FEC report for Rogers’ 2026 campaign committee, combined with his joint-fundraising committee and his Great Lakes Conservative Fund Super Political Action Committee, raised $817,000 to support the candidate’s senatorial ambitions. Of that money, his principal campaign committee and joint-fundraising committee collected $62,000 from banking industry donors.
Between October 2025 and December 2025, FEC reports show that the Rogers for Senate committee received $32,000 from a mixture of banking-related PACs and individual donors involved in the financial sector.
That includes the American Express PAC, which gave $5,000, and the Mortgage Bankers Association PAC, which donated $4,500 to Rogers’ campaign.
During that same period, the Team Rogers joint-fundraising operation, which collects shared fundraising dollars from the Michigan’s Resurgence PAC, Great Lakes Conservative Fund and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, received another $35,000 from financial institutions, investors and advisors.That included $12,000 apiece from Thomas W. Smith of Prescott Investors and Andrew McKnight of Fortress Investment Group.
Rogers-supporting Super PAC also saw large donations from bankers, financial executives
Rogers’ Great Lakes Conservative Fund netted $750,000 between October and December of 2025 from some of those same types of donors. The Super PAC received $100,000 from Bluff Point Associates Corp, while International Bancshares Corp and North Point Mergers & Acquisitions Inc. each gave the PAC $25,000.
And that’s just a snapshot of the kind of money flowing to the Rogers 2026 senatorial campaign.
Earlier in 2025, between March and September, Rogers received $157,303 from the financial industry, which includes a $50,000 contribution from Paul Singer, the founder of Elliott Management, and a $50,000 contribution from John W. Childs of Childs Associates to the Great Lakes Conservative Fund. Childs also gave $7,000 directly to the Rogers for Senate committee. Rogers received another pair of separate contributions of $7,000 from Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of Blackstone, and Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global. Also among his biggest contributors during that period was Mara Letica Saad, CEO of Letica Investment LLC, who gave $50,000 to the Team Rogers joint-fundraising arm in September 2025.
Past reports show Rogers’ previous campaigns raked in millions from the banking sector
Since 1999, records on Open Secrets, a database for tracking campaign fundraising, spending and allied contributions through PACs, show that Rogers received $1.25 million from the securities and investment industry throughout his career in the U.S. House.
Among the 1,712 representatives who served between 1990 and 2024, Open Secrets also shows that Rogers was one of the top recipients of banking and financial sector campaign cash, which settled him into the top 11% of lawmakers receiving contributions from bankers and investors.
That sum includes $319,088 from commercial banks and $69,749 from finance and credit companies — a total of $388,837 — between 1999 and 2014.
Of note, Rogers was a member of the Michigan Legislature between 1995 and 2000, and then was a member of the U.S. House between 2001 and 2015.
In his 1998 campaign for the Michigan Senate, his last for the state Legislature, Rogers took $5,180 from the banking industry, with $1,300 of that sum coming from the Michigan Bankers Association, and $400 from the Michigan Mortgage Bankers Association.
Rogers was a key supporter of the Credit Reform Act, which had banking industry support
Within his first year in the Michigan Senate, Rogers introduced and helped pass legislation to eliminate credit card interest rate caps, which increased the cap on interest rates and other kinds of debt, as well.
Rogers helped write the original version of the Credit Reform Act, which became Public Act 162 of 1995. Several of the bills in the package were tie-barred, which means they would all need to pass for the whole of the act to pass, and three of them were sponsored by Rogers — each increasing the interest rate limit for loans made by credit unions and motor vehicle financing. More specifically, the Rogers-sponsored portions of the act deleted an 18% cap on second mortgages and deleted the variable 16.5% and 22% rate limit on car financing.
Rogers offered a supportive vote on the package of bills, including those he sponsored.
Archival newspaper clippings from 1995 show that Francis Flanders, then the chairman, president and CEO of CB North, wrote a guest column in the Petoskey News-Review urging the state Legislature to pass the Credit Reform Act. Flanders mentions in the column’s lead paragraph that he was making that request alongside the Michigan Bankers Association, Michigan-based lenders and the Financial Institutions Bureau, one of the many predecessors to the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services, which formed in 2013.
Critics of the act warned that it would allow lenders to set rates at any level and could take advantage of the consumers in the process.
The law is still on the books, although there have been past bipartisan attempts to rein it in. HB 4581 of 2025, if enacted, would have amended that law to cap credit card interest rates at 10%. The bill was introduced and placed before the House Regulatory Reform Committee in June of last year, but has yet to see a committee hearing in the GOP-controlled lower chamber.
Rogers’ Congressional votes tracked with banking industry donations
As a congressman, Rogers’ votes lined up with pro-Wall Street priorities.
Rogers voted twice against former President Barack Obama and the Democrats’ hallmark financial regulations: The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, known as Dodd-Frank after the lawmakers who spearheaded the bills.
Dodd-Frank also created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Soon after Trump took office in 2025 following his election to a second term in the White House, he created the Department of Government Efficiency, led by billionaire tech provocateur Elon Musk. DOGE effectively killed the CFPB, an independent agency created specifically to keep banking practices ethical and accountable to the consumers that they serve.
States look at shoring up consumer protections as Trump hobbles federal watchdog
Rogers also voted for the Swaps Regulatory Improvement Act in 2013, which would have amended Dodd-Frank. The bill passed the House but never left the Senate, and Obama at the time voiced opposition to the bill, but had not threatened to veto it if it came before him. It never did.
It was reported by the New York Times in 2013 that CitiGroup’s lobbyists wrote the legislation, and if it was passed and signed into law, the act would have exempted broad swaths of trades from new regulations, including the bank’s recommendations for amendments that would have changed a majority of Dodd-Frank.
The Advance asked Rogers if his future hypothetical voting record in the U.S. Senate might look similar: close alignment with banks and the financial industry on some of their key priorities, even if they were at the expense of consumers and average families looking for a financial leg up against what critics say is a predatory industry.
Brouillet said voters should look to his record in Congress.
“Mike Rogers voted against the Wall Street bailout and for the auto rescue,” she said. “This is only one of the numerous examples of Mike putting Michigan first, as he always does.”
Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jon King for questions: info@michiganadvance.com.
