Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican running for U.S. Senate, is again facing accusations that he’s more of a Florida resident than a Michigan one, after resuming campaign activity from his Cape Coral home for more than a week in November and recently joking on a right-wing radio show that he would rather be “on the beach in Florida” as Michigan braced for a winter storm.
Rogers, a former FBI agent and congressman, launched his Senate campaign in April 2025 after narrowly losing the 2024 Senate race to Democrat Elissa Slotkin.
This year’s race is expected to be one of the country’s most closely watched, with Democratic Sen. Gary Peters retiring and Michigan again shaping up as a battleground.
On the Democratic side, U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, and public health expert Abdul El-Sayed are vying for the seat.
On the Republican side, campaign finance reports show Rogers raised about $3.4 million through October and had roughly $2.7 million cash on hand. Additionally, a super political action committee backing his run reported receiving $5 million from Texas oil billionaire Tim Dunn, a major GOP donor with ties to Christian nationalist causes.
The only other GOP candidate, former Michigan Republican Party co-chair Bernadette Smith, entered the race in November.
But as the money stacks up, Rogers is again confronting the “carpetbagger” label that dogged his last run, tied to his long-standing Florida ties and questions about where he actually lives.
Metro Times found that Rogers spent more than a week in November 2025 campaigning from his Florida mansion, beginning with a fundraiser in Naples on Nov. 19 and followed by a series of media interviews that appear to have been recorded from inside his Cape Coral home. Those included a virtual interview on Nov. 20, a social media video the next day, and another virtual interview on Nov. 26. In between, Rogers told a Michigan-focused audience in a Nov. 24 interview on Wood Radio that “my whole life is here [in Michigan],” despite being in Florida at the time.
During that same period, Rogers’s Cape Coral property listing was removed from the market on Nov. 22 after he had listed the home soon after launching his campaign. The listing has remained marked “removed” as of Jan. 26.
The Florida backdrop also surfaced publicly this month. On Jan. 17, Rogers appeared on “Breitbart News Saturday,” when the host introduced him from Michigan, and Rogers cracked, “Wouldn’t we all like to be with Matt right now on the beach in Florida. It’s even colder in Michigan,” prompting laughter.
Rogers was referring to Matthew Boyle, the regular host of the right-wing show who was in Florida at the time.
Rogers’s campaign spokeswoman Alyssa Brouillet tried to deflect criticism of the Republican by pointing out that McMorrow was born in New Jersey and Stevens spent time as a Bloomberg Philanthropies fellow in Louisville, Kentucky. She falsely claimed El-Sayed is an Egyptian citizen. He was born in the U.S. to parents who immigrated from Egypt.
“Unlike the New Jersey girl, ‘lady from Kentucky,’ and Egyptian citizen in this race, Mike is a born and raised Michigander who went to college here, spent his adult working life here, and brought up his own family here for the same reason he’s running for office: Michigan is his home,” Brouillet said in a statement. “Mike will never stop fighting to Get Michigan Working Again and help working families achieve the American Dream. And if The Left is worked up over a joke about an interviewer dodging a snowstorm, they must have a really tough time squaring away their own candidates’ records of fleeing the state to cozy up to coastal elites in Hollywood and NAPA wine caves.”
During Rogers’s 2024 campaign, the White Lake Township home associated with him had been demolished, with a new house under construction, raising questions about addresses tied to his voter registration.
Those doubts have lingered into his second run, giving Democrats and outside groups an opening to portray the race as one between candidates rooted in Michigan and a wealthy Republican who built a life elsewhere and now wants back in.
Curtis Hertel, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, denounced Rogers for campaigning in Florida.
“Mike Rogers enriched himself at Michiganders’ expense, moved to Florida, made a fortune from industries he oversaw in Congress and shady foreign interests, and only came back so he could run for Senate,” Hertel said. “Now he’s literally campaigning from his Florida mansion, pushing handouts for millionaires like himself while working families pay the price. Michiganders rejected Rogers for being an out-of-touch carpetbagger once before—and they’ll do it again in November.”
The renewed focus on residency also comes as Rogers is trying to consolidate the Republican base with a campaign infrastructure built around hard-right activists and clergy. In a recent Metro Times story, I reported that Rogers formed a “Faith Coalition Leadership Team” that includes figures who have attacked LGBTQ+ rights and promoted false claims about election fraud, aligning with Rogers’s own record in Congress of opposing LGBTQ+ protections.