Former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers bought a White Lake home in 2023. Clockwise: The original house on the property on Jan. 27, 2024; the house torn down on April 30, 2024; the new house under construction on Oct. 8, 2024; and the new home under construction on Aug. 10, 2024. | Photos by Jon King
For the second time in as many months, there are questions whether former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-White Lake) may have run afoul of a law he helped to pass while in the Michigan Senate.
Issues surrounding the residency of the former seven-term congressman from mid-Michigan have lingered for almost as long as he has sought to be Michigan’s next U.S senator, competing against Democratic nominee U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly).
Last year, Rogers and his wife, Kristi, purchased a home in White Lake Township soon after he announced his senatorial bid and said he had moved back to Michigan from Florida. But As the Michigan Advance first reported in January, the small, one-bedroom home was not where he was living. Instead, Rogers said he was staying at his brother’s home in Genoa Township, where he had originally registered to vote.
Where is Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood?
In May, when the Advance reported the original house had been demolished and a new one was being built, his campaign said he still lived at the Genoa Township residence, which was technically owned by his sister-in-law, but intended to move into the house once it was finished.
Then on Sunday, the Detroit Free Press reported that Rogers had switched his voter registration to the White Lake Township property and that was the address he used when he presumably voted for himself in Michigan’s August primary, in which he became the GOP nominee.
However, the paper also reported that the home does not yet have a certificate of occupancy, which means he could not legally be living in the home, creating the possibility that he committed a misdemeanor by registering to vote in a home in which he did not actually reside.
A request for comment was made to Rogers’ campaign, and was returned with a statement from spokesperson Chris Gustafson.
“Mike’s voter registration and drivers (sic) license match. Slotkin’s registration and district don’t. Why don’t you ask her about that,” he said, referencing the fact that Slotkin, who represents the 7th District, lives on her family farm in Holly, which is outside the district boundaries.
While Slotkin did encounter carpetbagging charges during her 2022 congressional campaign, it is not illegal for a member of Congress to live outside of their district.
Gustafson didn’t respond to a followup question seeking to confirm that Rogers was living in the White Lake Township home. However, Roger’ attorney, Eric Doster, told The Detroit News for a story Tuesday that the candidate is staying at his in-laws’ home, also in White Lake Township, until the house is ready.
As to whether he violated the law by voting in the August primary from an address he wasn’t living at, Doster said a section of Michigan Election Law, MCL 168.10, only requires that the city or township be correct, not necessarily the specific address.
The Michigan Secretary of State’s Office told the Advance that complaints concerning whether a voter was properly registered would need to be made by another citizen.
“A resident of the jurisdiction where he’s registered would need to file a challenge to his residency under Sec. 512 of Michigan Election Law and meet all of the requirements spelled out in that section: MCL – Section 168.512 – Michigan Legislature,” said Spokesperson Angela Benander. “Section 512 challenges must be filed with the clerk of that jurisdiction.”
When asked about the issue following Tuesday’s debate with Slotkin in Grand Rapids, Rogers was quick to dismiss it as an unimportant point only being debated for political purposes.
“The only people [that] are asking questions is the press,” Rogers told reporters. “The people that I talk to are worried about their grocery prices, their gas prices, the cost of electricity. I have a home. Matter of fact, I am the only candidate in the race who has purchased a home with my own money in the district.”
Slotkin’s Holly property, where she grew up, has been in her family for decades.
Former U.S. Rp. Mike Rogers (R-White Lake) takes questions from reporters following the U.S. Senate debate in Grand Rapids on Oct. 8, 2024 against U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly). | Kyle Davidson
Rogers confirmed he is staying with his in-laws, also in White Lake, and that was not all that out of the ordinary.
“Matter of fact, when … my father remodeled his first house, you know where he stayed? He stayed with us for almost 11 months. So, l mean, this is such nonsense. It’s so ridiculous. And the attacks are coming from the Democrats,” said Rogers.
The Slotkin campaign declined to comment for this story when asked by the Advance.
In his career, Rogers has taken a hard line on voting residency issues.
In 1999, Rogers sponsored state Senate legislation, which ultimately passed and signed into law, that required the address on a voter’s driver’s license to be the same as the address on their voter registration.
“You need to be registered where you live,” Rogers told the Lansing State Journal on March 24, 1999. “Now, when you change your driver’s license, automatically your voter registration address would change. Where you live is where you vote. Putting it under one system means it’s more difficult to commit voter fraud.”
At the time, concerns were raised that the legislation sponsored by Rogers would discourage college students from voting.
A May 1999 editorial in Rogers’ hometown paper, the Livingston County Press, opposed the measure for that reason.
“The 8th District, you see, includes all of Ingham County and Michigan State University. College kids tend to vote Democratic, so the cynics are saying that Rogers is trying to keep the MSU college vote as low as possible in 2000 (and beyond),” said the editorial. “Rogers, meanwhile, says that his political ambitions have nothing to do with this bill. He says that Secretary of State Candice Miller has requested it to clean up the state’s list of eligible voters. While we take Rogers at his word that this bill has no political motive, we still feel that it’s bad legislation. It’s hard enough to get college students to vote, so we’re opposed to any legislation which puts up more road-blocks.”
When Rogers did run for the 8th District the next year, he ended up winning the seat by just 111 votes over Democratic state Sen. Dianne Byrum. Rogers may have been helped by his legislation, as Michigan State University was within the 8th District.
In 2018, Democratic students at both MSU and the University of Michigan filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the requirement. As the Lansing State Journal reported at the time, the lawsuit included a transcript of an exchange between Rogers and Byrum in March 1999, as the bill was being debated in the Michigan Senate.
U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) and former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers at the Grand Rapids debate, Oct. 8, 2024 | Michael Buck/WOOD TV8
“Byrum argued that college students want to keep a home address because of frequent moves and keeping track of financial aid and banking documents,” reported the paper.
“The policy that she’s advocating is basically we don’t want them to do it right, we want them to be able to be registered in one place and live in another place,” the transcript quoted Rogers as saying. “That’s just, I mean, kind of a slap in the face to democracy, and I don’t think that’s where we want to go.”
The passage of no-reason absentee voting in Michigan in 2018 as part of Proposal 3 largely made the issue moot for college students, who can now cast an absentee ballot via mail.
In August, Rogers spoke at an event at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office that was held by the campaign of former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for president. Billed as a press conference, it resulted in multiple complaints that it violated Michigan Campaign Finance Law by using taxpayer resources for an explicitly political purpose.
In that instance also, it appeared that Rogers’ participation in the event was at cross purposes to a law he had helped pass while in the Michigan Senate, specifically adding candidates for federal elections to fall under MCL 169.257, the statute which expressly prohibits the use of any public resources for political campaign purposes.
Those complaints, which were made against Livingston County Sheriff Mike Murphy and his office for hosting the event, remain under investigation by the Michigan Elections Bureau.
Former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers’ home under construction in White Lake, Oct. 8, 2024 | Jon King
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