9/28/2026: The Hardest Part of This

Sometimes I get asked what seems like a simple question: “What’s the hardest part of running for Congress?”

There are a lot of obvious answers. The hours aren’t great. Generally, we’re talking 10 hours a day when I’m home and as many as 18 hours when we’re on the road… but I don’t mind it that much.

Then there are the speeches. I give four or five a week. Most run ten to fifteen minutes. I don’t write them down, and they change each time I give them, so I don’t get bored.

Then there’s meeting hundreds of people every week… oh wait, that’s probably the best part.

Some days I spend four to six hours in my truck, driving, but these eleven counties are truly beautiful. I can’t complain about that.

If those aren’t the hardest part, what is?

It’s this: I decided early on that I wouldn’t run against Donald Trump. He wasn’t going to be on the ballot, and we’ve given the guy all the oxygen he needs. I wanted to talk about bringing this district forward. I didn’t want to run against Donald Trump. I wanted to run against Mike Rogers, his record, and the damage he has done to this district. The problem is, there’s no Mike Rogers to run against.

Since January, he’s made five public statements of any real import. One said we need a $600 billion-a-year increase in the defense budget so Trump can have “his dream military” (shocker, defense contractors have given him over $1 million). Two statements don’t count because he criticized the administration and then contradicted himself within 48 hours. One was a thirty-second, generic “aren’t our troops great” comment at the beginning of a hearing. The last was him saying there was too much “churn” in DoD leadership, but he failed to say he was going to do anything about it, which was honest because he hasn’t done anything about it.

He has no real online presence. He last updated his website in April. He has two Facebook accounts. One has had no posts since the primaries in May. All his other social media, including Instagram and Twitter, feature photos of him standing in line with three to seven other people in staged, awkward-looking poses. 

He doesn’t speak in public, only at closed-door, invitation-only events.

He’s said practically nothing about the election. His website features a banner at the top that reads “Trump Endorsed” and “Our Way Of Fighting Back,” but he doesn’t say what he’s fighting back against. His only other statement on the election came on Facebook the day after the primary, when he said, “Next step: fighting Democrats’ radical anti-Trump agenda in November!”

I’m running against a man who has been given the privilege of serving the 726,000 people who live in this district; a man who can serve some of the strongest, bravest, hardest-working people I have ever met; yet he refuses to engage them on any meaningful level. He holds no open events. He has no unscripted contact with the people in his district. His staff will tell you anyone can set an appointment with him, but I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to who tried and couldn’t get an appointment, or who got one and he didn’t bother to show up. For someone who has been running for public office for over three decades, he doesn’t seem to like the people who have elected him to office twelve times.

The hardest part of running for this office is knowing Mike Rogers has wasted so many opportunities to engage with and improve the lives of the great people who live in his district.

Rest assured, when we win, we will do things differently. We will have open town hall meetings. We will be out in the public. We will hold office hours in every county seat. We will represent all 726,000 people in this district, and it will be an honor.