Michigan’s primary election is on Aug. 6. The U.S. Senate race is on the ballot. Voters will decide who advances to the general election in November in the race to replace Democratic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who’s retiring.
Michigan Public's Morning Edition is featuring a series of interviews with major-party candidates. (You can link to all of the earlier candidate interviews at the bottom of this page.)
One of the four candidates on the Republican primary ballot is former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, who represented Michigan's 8th congressional district from 2001 to 2015.
Rogers spoke with Morning Edition host Doug Tribou.
Doug Tribou: After serving in the U.S. Army in the late 1980s, you spent five years in the FBI. Then you got into politics, first in the Michigan state senate before you were elected to Congress. You’ve been out of politics for almost a decade. Why run to get back in now?
Mike Rogers: My wife and I were having coffee about, I don't know, maybe 18 months ago now. And we just thought, man, everything is broken. I mean, Washington, D.C. isn't working. Our grocery costs are going up, and we're projecting weakness around the world. And I thought, you know, with the experience that I have, it would be valuable in trying to turn some of those things around. I mean, when you think about the pressure that's on the average working Michigan family right now, it doesn't have to be this way. And so there are things that we can do to change it.
DT: The seat you’re running for has been held by Senator Debbie Stabenow, who first won it in 2000. Stabenow has earned a reputation for being a key figure in some major budget legislation, especially agriculture funding. How would you work to fill the role she’s played in looking out for Michigan’s interests?
"[I]f we can't build things here in America, we're going to be in trouble."Former Congressman and current U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers
MR: Well, we have a whole bunch of interests here, and, candidly, we have a whole bunch of problems here. And when you talk to farmers, they're saying the regulation coming out of Washington, D.C. has been debilitating for them and it doesn't allow them to compete. Therefore, we're importing food. I argue that's probably a national security concern going forward. And same with production, if we can't build things here in America, we're going to be in trouble. So I'm going to find ways, as I did when I was a member [of Congress], to work with anyone to fix those problems.
DT: One of your Republican opponents is also a former Congressman, Justin Amash. You were colleagues for a couple of terms.
In a recent post on the social media platform X, he called out both you and current Representative Elissa Slotkin — who’s running in the Democratic Senate Primary — saying “Rogers and Slotkin have promoted the unlawful use of federal watchlists to deny rights to law-abiding Americans without due process—resulting in confinement, interrogations, delays, humiliation, and trauma—sometimes simply because a person has a common Arabic name.”
In another post, he cites your support for the Patriot Act. How do you respond to that?
MR: So he's confusing a whole bunch of things in that. And that's the unfortunate side of disingenuous politics in 2024.
The Patriot Act — and I think the big problem there was something called [Section] 702 — what was happening is the FBI was going in and making exceptions to pull information out of that collected information. That's wrong. On U.S. citizens, by the way.
It is intended to go after non-U.S. citizens who pose a threat to the United States. I think that the FBI had some serious problems there. That's a culture issue and a leadership issue. And the good news is, I can go back to Washington, D.C., and actually get that fixed.
DT: So you're opposed to warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens?
MR: Yes, absolutely. It was never intended for that.
DT: I want to turn to another topic that's made a lot of news in this campaign and nationally. You are opposed to abortion. If legislation for a national ban on abortion came before the U.S. Senate, would you support it?
MR: No. Listen, I believe that the states are the best place to have this discussion. And Michigan citizens said in an overwhelming fashion that we want abortion legal and made it a part of our state Constitution. So it is not my job to go back to Washington, D.C. and change that.
DT: But it is conceivable that, say, under a Trump presidency and a Republican-controlled Congress, that that legislation could come up. So you would vote against that if that type of legislation came into the Senate?
MR: Yeah. President Trump has said that he believes the states should do it. And so I won't vote for anything in Washington, D.C. that undermines what the people of Michigan have done here and made it a part of the [state] Constitution. And so I think that matter is settled law here in the state of Michigan.
DT: On January 5, 2021, you wrote a column in the Washington Post criticizing President Trump and Republicans for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
In that column, you wrote, “Refusing to recognize state-certified elections without evidence of fraud is an abdication of the higher responsibility to our Constitution. Elected officials who are engaging in this behavior must resist the urge of self-service, self-preservation and blind allegiance to a single person or party.”
Former President Trump is still spreading lies about the 2020 election during this campaign. And you appeared with him at his rally in Grand Rapids over the weekend. Why are you able to support his candidacy this time around, given what you wrote in 2021?
MR: So I still believe that if there is no evidence of fraud, we should accept the results of the election and that that part has never changed. And there are lots of disagreements on the level of anomalies. There are anomalies in every single election. And by the way, we're going to have ballot integrity folks, working on the U.S. Senate campaign as well to try to minimize any of those anomalies.
And so I do believe that President Trump — we have serious problems. He is the right person to help, when I get to the United States Senate, turn that around. We've lost our ability to export more food than we've imported. We need to protect Michigan manufacturing. We need to make sure that the EV mandates don't kill our automobile industry. And so all of those problems outweigh any of the other discussions we've just talked about.
"Michigan citizens said in an overwhelming fashion that we want abortion legal and made it a part of our state Constitution. So it is not my job to go back to Washington, D.C. and change that."U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers, who opposes abortion, on whether he would vote to support a national abortion ban
DT: Your column in 2021 is a full-out repudiation of any questions of election integrity. And of course there are minor anomalies in anything done at that scale. But there is absolutely zero evidence that there were any anomalies — enough that would have swung the election. There is no evidence of a conspiracy. There's no evidence of anything along those lines, which is what you said in your own column. And we are still hearing that from the top of the Republican ticket.
MR: As I've said, I firmly stand behind that column. But if there are anomalies, I do believe that we should use the system to try to make sure that elections are fair. And I will tell you, if people stop believing that their vote counts, we are in trouble in our democracy.
DT: Well, I'm not saying that you have done this, but I will say that I think one of the reasons that some people believe their vote hasn't been counted is because lies about their vote counting have been spread nationally. I think we are clearly seeing the effects of that.
Businessman Sandy Pensler who'd been running for the Senate — and will still appear on the ballot because the ballots have already been prepared — pulled out of the Senate race over the weekend. He announced that and threw his support behind your campaign. What effect do you see that having on the race?
MR: Unity is going to be very, very important going forward. And suffice to say that the Republican Party has had a few challenges of late. [Chuckles] And unity has not been its strength. Well, we're changing that. And so I was honored to get his endorsement. And so I think this is a really good thing. It's very positive. And we're looking forward to getting through August 6 and then on to November.
DT: And a final question for you, something we've asked other candidates as well. Will you accept the official results of the primary election, win or lose?
MR: Oh, I have always said that I will accept the results of the election. That's never been in doubt.
Editor's note: Quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the interview near the top of this page.
