- Republican US Senate nominee Mike Rogers served in Congress for 14 years, focusing on national security, healthcare and more
- Rogers is tying his background to new policy proposals like putting shop classes in every school and building more affordable housing
- Democratic opponent Abdul El-Sayed argues his ties to Trump and flip-flops on issues like Iran war should be a red flag for voters
As he runs for US Senate, Michigan Republican Mike Rogers is touting a career of service, including a 14-year tenure in the US House that concluded in 2015.
Rogers chaired a powerful committee overseeing national intelligence, which his campaign says is how he “made his greatest mark in Congress.” He also sponsored eight laws ranging from national security spending to emergency preparedness.
More controversially, Rogers also advocated for opioid access and was a key supporter of the Patriot Act, positions Democratic rival Abdul El-Sayed has used to attack him in the general election.
Following a stint in the private sector, Rogers ran for US Senate in 2024 but lost to Democrat Elissa Slotkin. He’s now back for round two as he competes with El-Sayed to replace retiring US Sen. Gary Peters.
Much has changed since Rogers exited the US House eleven years ago, shortly before now-President Donald Trump rose to prominence and reshaped Republican politics.
A one-time Trump critic, Rogers has since forged a political alliance with the president and frequently champions the administration’s policies, a strategy some observers say could diminish his appeal among independents and moderates in the 2026 contest.
“The opinions of the president are going to loom large and color voters’ intentions on all of the other races, even the ones that are pretty distinct,” said Matt Grossmann, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University.
“Most of what matters in terms of who Michigan’s senator is are things that involve national partisan politics and the balance of power between the parties, so it’s not an incorrect inclination for voters to have,” Grossmann continued. “That said, some aspects of the record or the intended promises do matter.”
In reintroducing himself to general election voters, Rogers has highlighted his family’s middle-class roots and his past bipartisan work in Congress, tying his background to new policy proposals like putting shop classes in every school and building more affordable housing.
“The solutions I’m championing for Michigan transcend party lines: making housing affordable, bringing back jobs, fixing our broken healthcare system, and saving schools,” he told Bridge Michigan in a statement. “This isn’t about left vs right; it’s about saving our state.”
What was Rogers’ record in Congress and beyond, and did he deliver on his top priorities? Here’s what you need to know as he competes to be Michigan’s next US Senator.
A bipartisan background
Rogers was generally regarded as a bipartisan operator during his congressional tenure, a reputation that has faded somewhat since he politically aligned himself with Trump in both of his US Senate campaigns.
- An analysis conducted by the Lugar Center and Georgetown University ranked Rogers as the 117th-most-bipartisan out of 422 lawmakers reviewed during his last term in Congress.
- The index, which assesses lawmakers based on how frequently they co-sponsored legislation from a member of the opposite party or attracted bipartisan support on their own bills, designates anyone who scores above zero as bipartisan, a bar Rogers cleared.
- The Heritage Foundation gave Rogers a 53% conservative score for his Congressional voting record, rating him less conservative than the average House Republican at 61%.
In 2026, Rogers is hoping to capitalize on his bipartisan background, appealing directly to Democratic voters turned off by El-Sayed’s progressive politics and highlighting issues where he broke rank with the party line on behalf of Michigan voters.
In one advertisement, Rogers cited his vote against a 2008 financial industry bailout and support for the federal auto industry bailout, saying he did so “because for me, Michigan always comes first.”
El-Sayed and other Democrats argue Rogers’ pitch rings hollow, citing his embrace of Trump even as the administration’s continuation of the war in Iran, steep tariffs and a rocky relationship with Canada have disproportionately impacted Michigan residents.
“Whether it was giving tax cuts to billionaires and raising health care costs for everyone, Mike Rogers has stood with Donald Trump every single time,” Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel told Bridge Michigan last month, citing Trump-backed laws Rogers has generally supported but was no longer in Congress to vote on.
“I don’t think that Democrats will be fooled by Mike Rogers, nor will the Michigan people.”
Trump shift
Rogers’ congressional tenure ended before Trump won the 2016 election but the president has loomed large in both his campaigns.
Though he had at times criticized Trump, Rogers first closely aligned himself with the president in 2024. The shift raised eyebrows, but some observers saw Rogers’ embrace of Trump — and the endorsement that came with it — as a necessary step to unite a fractured state GOP.
This year, Rogers has repeated some of Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election and even questioned his own loss to Slotkin in 2024. Some of his positions have shifted too:
- Trade: In Congress, Rogers generally supported free-trade policies and in a 2000 debate said he thought the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would be “good for America” in the long run. But more recently, Rogers has defended Trump’s protectionist approach to trade. He has called tariffs “necessary” to protect Michigan’s interests and blamed high costs on Democratic officials, who he said “have allowed jobs to disappear by the hundreds of thousands.”
- War: Rogers was also considered a “hawk” in the US House and in 2002 voted for the Iraq War. He initially supported Trump’s decision to join Israel in a war against Iran and in May predicted gas prices would “structurally” come down once the conflict is resolved. But in a video posted to social media Monday, Rogers said the Iran war “needs to end, and end quickly,” calling in the interim for a temporary embargo on US diesel exports.
On issues like skyrocketing gas prices and other high costs, Rogers has attempted to thread a needle by defending Trump’s actions while calling for changes to alleviate the burden on Michigan residents.
Last week, he proposed suspending both state and federal gas taxes, which is politically unlikely.
El-Sayed, who has argued Rogers would be little more than a “rubber stamp” for Trump’s agenda, responded to his rival’s gas tax proposal by blaming costs on “the insane war your boss Donald Trump got us into.”
During a Tuesday press conference in Detroit, El-Sayed said Rogers “can’t unring the bell” on his initial support of the war. “When you justify illegal, unjustifiable wars, people pay the price,” El-Sayed said. “Mike Rogers needs to be held accountable for why he rubber-stamped this war in the first place, why he thought this was a win-win-win.”
Rogers, though, says he’s already working with Trump to benefit Michigan and said he’ll support the president’s policies if they’re good for Michigan. And “if it’s not good for Michigan, I’ll be against it. And I’ll work with the President to fix it,” he told Bridge.
National security
During his congressional tenure, Rogers was perhaps best known for his work on the House Intelligence Committee with the panel’s ranking Democrat, Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland.
In 2012, Rogers led an investigation into the terrorist attack at U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, which debunked claims of intelligence failures or “stand down” orders delaying emergency response.
He was also a key supporter of the Patriot Act, legislation enacted in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that significantly expanded legal use of domestic surveillance by law enforcement.
At several points during his tenure — including in 2013, when fellow Michigan Republican Justin Amash challenged the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of domestic phone records — Rogers defended the law’s provisions in the name of counterterrorism.
“The charge that the program tramples on the privacy of citizens is simply wrong,” Rogers wrote in a 2013 joint statement with Ruppersberger defending the provision Amash had tried to defeat.
Amash, who ran against Rogers in the 2024 GOP Senate primary,
argued that Rogers’ past support for surveillance programs were a “huge liability.”
Rogers told Michigan Public at the time that the Patriot Act was “never intended” for warrantless surveillance of US citizens and pledged if elected to fix “a culture issue and a leadership issue” in the FBI.
Criticism over his connection to surveillance programs has reemerged. El-Sayed recently claimed Rogers was “fighting for the Peeping Tom vote,” citing committee hearing footage from 2013 in which Rogers said: “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.”
Rogers continued his work in the national and cybersecurity space after exiting Congress, working as a television commentator and cybersecurity consultant for technology companies like AT&T and Nokia. At one point, Trump considered him for the role of FBI director.
Asked whether national security would remain a focus for him if elected to the US Senate, Rogers told Bridge in a statement that it would, but noted that “there are many other issues that require urgent attention,” including education, attracting new manufacturing opportunities to Michigan and bringing down housing costs.
Laws passed
Rogers was the primary sponsor of eight laws during his time in Congress:
- Three were spending bills authorizing federal funding for the nation’s intelligence programs
- Rogers led the charge on laws that increased preparedness for pandemics or other public health emergencies and officially designated the Haqqani network as a terrorist group
- He also sponsored the Respect for Fallen Heroes Act, a bipartisan law criminalizing protests on federal land while families were burying service members, as well as a law offering additional support and benefits to families of fallen law enforcement officers
As a federal lawmaker, Rogers supported Medicare Part D, the law that added prescription drug coverage to Medicare, and increased wounded veterans’ access to pain management and other resources.
He told Bridge one of his proudest achievements was successfully advocating for 529 plans to allow tax-free savings for college, an idea he’d previously championed as a state senator in Michigan.
Rogers missed 249 of 9,768 roll call votes taken during his time in Congress, or 2.5% of all votes, a rate that was on par with his legislative peers at the time, according to GovTrack.
Healthcare
Rogers has been a vocal champion of conservative healthcare causes both in and out of Congress. He opposed creation of the Affordable Care Act while serving in the US House and was reliably anti-abortion, co-sponsoring several bills to restrict access.
More recently, he supported changes made in the Trump administration’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” to the country’s Medicaid program and opposed extending an enhanced premium tax credit program for health insurance plans bought through HealthCare.gov.
In 2003, Rogers introduced the National Pain Care Policy Act, which began a decade of advocacy by the Republican lawmaker to boost opioid prescriptions, with a goal to “extend accessibility (of pain medications) to more and more Americans suffering from chronic pain.”
A 2024 Bridge investigation, during Rogers’ previous run for Senate, found that he was one of the biggest advocates of increased access to pain medications while he was in Congress from 2001-2015, which he said at the time was motivated by his brother’s experience with chronic pain.
Rogers has also accepted contributions from groups and individuals tied to the pharmaceutical industry in past campaigns, though he is not, as El-Sayed claimed earlier this year, a lobbyist.
During a March 21 event in Macomb County, Rogers told supporters he’d be open to ending no-cost preventive care for health insurance plans and creating “catastrophic funds” for the sickest Americans, though the concepts didn’t make it into his broader health policy agenda.
Rogers recently announced a health care plan calling for an expansion of the TrumpRx program for lowering prescription drug costs, in one campaign ad comparing high costs in the US to those of Canada.
He supports penalties for health providers and insurance companies that don’t publicly share itemized prices with patients or excessively deny coverage for care, but said during a Saturday press conference in Taylor that he doesn’t want to “blow up the system that we have.”
El-Sayed, a former public health official and a supporter of Medicare for All, has criticized his opponent’s past opposition to allowing Medicare to negotiate lower costs for prescription drugs.
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