If tea leaves could scream, they’d be shouting that former Republican Congressman (and Livingston County favorite son) Mike Rogers will be going head-to-head with Democratic U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin to replace retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow.
Why do I think Mike Rogers is running for Senate? I have several reasons, but not everyone agrees with me.
There was speculation several months ago that Rogers was eyeing a presidential primary run. That theory makes sense: Rogers made three trips to Iowa last summer, in addition to visits to South Carolina, and then New Hampshire in the fall, all early primary states. In an August column by Nolan Finley in The Detroit News, a source “close to Rogers” said he wants to be “in the White House.”
But the current state of Republican primary politics seems ill-suited to Rogers’ style. Instead of the polarizing my-way-or-the-highway, bare-knuckles, burn-it-all-down approach to governance, Rogers is known for being smart, reasonable, and — most importantly — for working across the aisle.
Instead, it seems like Rogers could very well be eyeing a Senate run. He spoke at the Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce Legislative Policy Forum Thursday evening, before which Gongwer News Service asked whether he was considering running for a federal office in 2024.
Rogers told Gongwer that he is focused on the national policy group he and his wife founded, Leadership to Ensure the American Dream (LEAD). The organization “creates a platform to address the complex issues we must face as families, communities, states, and as a country that impacts the American Dream above the political crossfire.”
“I have been flattered. I’ve gotten phone calls … very interested in the possibility of that,” Rogers told Gongwer. “In politics, you never say never, but I at this point, I just, I’m really focused on this national effort.”
Rogers is supposed to appear on WKAR’s “Off the Record” show with Tim Skubick this weekend.
Skubick writes that Rogers is mulling a presidential run, while Kyle Melinn of the Capitol news service MIRS wrote in Lansing City Pulse that Rogers appears to be looking to run for U.S. Senate.
Rogers replaced Stabenow in the U.S. House, so there seems to be some serendipitous political symmetry at play should he attempt to do the same in the U.S. Senate.
On top of that, it’s interesting to note that Stabenow, Rogers and Slotkin have all represented Livingston County in Congress, and Buddy Moorehouse was one of the first people to suggest Rogers run for Senate.
Rogers and Slotkin — said to be friends — are cut from the same national security cloth. Slotkin’s served on the Homeland Security, Armed Services, and Veterans Affairs committees; Rogers was chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
It’s been reported that Slotkin said if it had been Mike Rogers serving in the 8th District Congressional seat in 2018, she would not have run. But it wasn’t Rogers; instead, it was Republican Mike Bishop of Rochester, and Slotkin picked him off by nearly 4 points in a district that had been considered safely red.
Slotkin and Rogers are both likable, smart, hard-working, political moderates. These are not politicians who drop in only for photo ops and high-profile events; both Slotkin and Rogers have proven themselves to be hard-working, responsive community allies and servants, motivated by a sense of duty.
Both political parties want desperately to lay claim to this Senate seat. If this match up comes to be, it will be one of the highest-profile, most-expensive races in the country, featuring two of the very best retail politicians around.
One major issue on which Slotkin and Rogers diverge is abortion: Slotkin is pro-choice (as is Stabenow), and Rogers is pro-life. How that would play out in 2024 remains to be seen, but it was a HUGE issue for Michigan voters in 2022, and I can’t imagine support for a woman’s right to choose would be any less in 2024.
Should he decide to run, Rogers will have to move back to Michigan, and he’ll need to get busy raising money, something at which Slotkin excels: in the first 24 hours after she announced her candidacy, Slotkin raised a gobsmacking $1.2 million. There’s also the matter of Republican Nikki Snyder, a member of the Michigan Board of Education and the first candidate of either party to throw a hat into the Senate ring.
So, stay tuned. We may soon be buckling up for what could be one of the most fascinating and consequential political rides of 2024.
