Michael J. Rogers Congressional collection

Mike Rogers was born on June 2, 1963 in Livonia, Michigan, the youngest of five sons. He spent most of his youth in Livingston County, growing up in Howell and Brighton. His father was a teacher, Brighton Township board member, and township supervisor. His mother was an executive director of the Brighton Chamber of Commerce for 25 years. Rogers graduated from Adrian College in 1985 with a degree in Sociology and Criminal Justice. Rogers co-founded EBI Builders, a construction company, with his brothers that year, before joining the United States Army. He served as a commissioned officer in the United States Army through the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. Rogers held the rank of Second Lieutenant and became a company commander, serving from 1985 to 1989 in a forward maintenance company that pioneered the army's new "light division" concept.

In 1989, Rogers attended the FBI academy and then joined the FBI as a special agent. In his five year career at the FBI, Rogers investigated corruption cases in Chicago. His work led to the arrest and conviction of a local crime boss, as well as the town president (Betty Loren-Maltese) and a former chief of police (Emil Schulio) of Cicero, IL. Loren-Maltese and Schulio were arrested on charges of racketeering conspiracy, money laundering, fraud, and tax offenses which involved the expropriation of $10 million in taxpayer money.

Rogers entered public service in 1994, running for a Michigan Senate seat in the state's 26th legislative district. This district included Livingston County, Clinton County, and Shiawassee County. Rogers defeated Democratic challenger Mike Hatty that year and began the first of two terms in the Michigan Senate. With a legislative agenda focusing upon easing regulations on small business, protecting consumers from monopolies, and fighting internet crime, Rogers was a key ally of Governor John Engler and an increasingly important figure within the Senate leadership. He was placed on several committees and was the chairman of the Senate Committee on Human Resources, Labor, and Veterans Affairs. He served as Majority Floor Leader between 1999 and 2000.

Rogers’ chief accomplishments in the Michigan Senate were an extension of the Michigan Veteran’s Trust Fund in 1995 (which provided grants to veterans in times of economic emergency), the banning of telephone “slamming” (telecommunications companies exchanging customer contracts without customer consent), and the creation of the Michigan Education Savings Account program, which allowed Michiganders to make tax-free donations to students’ higher education expenses. Rogers attracted public attention during his Senate career as a result of other projects, as well. These included the introduction of a bill aiming to ensure compliance with federal marijuana possession laws by the city of Ann Arbor, which did not pass, and another bill that required college students to vote in the same city in which their drivers licenses were registered, which did pass.

In 1999, taking advantage of 8th District US Representative Debbie Stabenow’s departure from the US House of Representatives for the US Senate in 2000, Rogers announced he would run for her seat. Rogers ran on a platform of protecting Social Security, modernizing Medicare, improving education, and building up the military. His Democrat opponent, Dianne Byrum, was a colleague of Rogers’ in the Michigan Senate. The election in 2000 was characterized as amiable, but it was also unusually close, with Rogers winning by a mere 111 votes, and only after a recount that lasted into December.

In the US House of Representatives, Rogers was immediately recognized by the Republican leadership as a potential political star. He was made a deputy whip in February of 2001, and his plan for a national version of the Michigan Education Savings Account program was included in President George W. Bush's final tax cut proposal, which was signed into law. Rogers became a reliable ally of Bush’s from the beginning of his time in the US House, supporting Bush’s tax cuts as well as the President’s education programs. The close relationship only increased after the attacks by Al Qaeda on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Rogers – the only former FBI agent in Congress – became prized for his experience in law enforcement by the administration. He also became a leader on national security and foreign policy issues. He helped craft legislation that would appear in the PATRIOT Act of October, 2001, and was an expert analyst of the U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Rogers was a strong campaigner and remained popular in his district. Determined to hold onto the seat for which he had fought so close a battle in 2000, Rogers set a record for fundraising by a freshman Congressman, raising over seven-hundred thousand dollars in under six months in 2001. With his grip on the 8th District secured through his fundraising acumen and favorable redistricting that he helped to shape, Rogers was never seriously challenged for his seat over his fourteen-year House career. He won three of his six reelection campaigns with over 60 percent of the vote, and the other four with over 55% of the vote. Rogers was recognized for his political know how by the Republican leadership, which gave him leadership of the Republican National Committee’s program for fundraising for close Congressional races (RNCC Battleground) in 2004, and an incumbency retention program in 2009.

Rogers sponsored or co-sponsored 106 bills in his fourteen years in the House of Representatives. He directed most of his efforts at healthcare and education legislation, but perhaps his most lasting achievement has been the 2006 Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act, which prohibits demonstrations at national cemeteries: a measure directed at the Westboro Baptist Church’s protests at the funerals of American soldiers. Rogers also worked to fight oil-drilling in the Great Lakes, although he had to work out disagreements with Democrats in the House and Senate over the exact shape that such legislation should take.

While Barack Obama propelled Democrats into the White House in 2008, Rogers continued to gain influence. For Rogers' decisive role in advising the White House on foreign policy, especially drone operations in Afghanistan, Republican House Speaker John Boehner awarded Rogers with the chairmanship of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in 2010. This committee is tasked with overseeing intelligence agencies such as the CIA and the National Security Agency. In his time as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, the committee was characterized by the press as an island of bipartisanship. Rogers managed to pass the first intelligence-funding bill in five years (in 2011), and several others over subsequent years with bipartisan majorities.

Nevertheless, Rogers was a persistent critic of the Democratic administration under President Obama. A signer of the Americans for Tax Reform’s pledge to refrain from supporting any increase in taxes, Rogers opposed Obama’s tax increases throughout the President’s two terms. Rogers also fought against the adoption of the Affordable Care Act in 2009, criticized Obama’s plans to close the Guantanamo detention center in Cuba the same year, and in 2010 argued that the President’s policies on interrogation techniques were too restrictive. In 2013, Rogers chaired a comprehensive intelligence committee investigation of the 2012 Benghazi attack on an American embassy which had resulted in the death of an American ambassador. While the investigation debunked several conspiracy theories concerning the intelligence community, Rogers continued to argue that the President and his administration’s behavior had been incompetent and manipulative before, during and after the event. In March of 2014, Rogers abruptly announced his decision not to seek reelection for Representative of Michigan’s 8th District. Upon his retirement from politics in January of 2015, he began to host and produce a nationally syndicated radio program called “Something to Think About” on Westwood One.