Detroit Free Press: “Michigan GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers’ neighborhoods have everything but Mr. Rogers.”
LANSING — A bombshell new report from Detroit Free Press exposed that “Mike Rogers does not live in the house” in White Lake Township as the house “did not — and still does not — have a certificate of occupancy.”
The Rogers campaign is “mighty cagey” about where Rogers lives and “refused multiple requests to discuss the matter” while neighbors in the house he claims to live in with his brother confirmed “he doesn’t live [there]” and said they had “never seen Mike around.”
“After he abandoned Michigan to walk through the revolving door at the expense of Michiganders, Mike Rogers is back to run for Senate but he has been lying about where he lives. Rogers is trying to fool voters, and his campaign owes Michiganders answers about where he actually lives,” said Michigan Democratic Party spokesperson Sam Chan.
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Detroit Free Press: Michigan GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers’ neighborhoods have everything but Mr. Rogers
- I don’t know where Mike Rogers lives, but it’s not where he’s registered to vote.
- Rogers, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, changed his voter registration on July 2 to a home in White Lake Township that is under construction. A month later, he used the White Lake address to vote (presumably, for himself) in the four-way race for the GOP nomination to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow.
- There’s just one problem: The house did not — and still does not — have a certificate of occupancy.
- That means Rogers could not live there legally.
- And if he didn’t live there, he may have broken the law by using that address to vote.
- I say “may,” because while there’s no question you cannot live in a home without a certificate of occupancy, Michigan law is a little squishy when it comes to residency. (Get your galoshes out, because we’ll dive into that quagmire in a few minutes.)
- The Rogers campaign is mighty cagey about the question of just where Rogers has been staying, beyond saying it’s in White Lake Township. They refused multiple requests to discuss the matter, issuing only a carefully-worded statement blaming everyone from White Lake officials, to the housing crisis, to the media, but offering few concrete answers. (Campaign spokesman Chris Gustafson also faulted “constant bureaucratic delays during the construction,” but doesn’t blame Rogers’ brother and erstwhile landlord Bill, who was one of the contractors building the lakefront home and who, as Genoa Township supervisor, presumably knows his way around local government.)
- Gustafson’s blame-athon does confirm Mike Rogers does not live in the house, however.
- While that didn’t address any of my legal questions, I was relieved to learn the sexagenarian former congressman isn’t crabwalking his way over the unpaved driveway to cop a squat in the porta potty I saw a couple weeks ago out by the contractor’s trucks parked on the property.
- Rogers’ residency, and accusations of carpetbagging, have been an issue since he moved back to Michigan last summer after U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow announced her retirement on Jan. 5, 2023.
- Stabenow’s timing couldn’t have been worse for Rogers, who six months earlier bought a posh home in Cape Coral, Florida, worth $1.6 million.
- Online descriptions of the home call it an “estate” and say it offers “EXCEPTIONAL WATERFRONT LIVING!” The photos on Zillow.com justify the use of the braggadocious capital letters. For starters, it’s on a canal that gives access to the Caloosahatchee River. Its 4,700 square feet include five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a formal dining room, 14-foot high ceilings, a tile roof, a balcony overlooking the water, and a “HUGE POOL with TWO SPAs!” Rogers obtained a homestead property tax exemption on the spread, which you can only do for a primary residence.
- Nevertheless, on July 1, 2023, Rogers bought a 728-square-foot home with one bedroom and one bathroom in White Lake Township and, one month later, registered to vote using brother Bill’s address in Genoa Township. Instead of moving into the claustrophobic cabin, Rogers decided to knock it down and build the home currently under construction.
- The Rogers campaign says the former congressman and his wife moved into the 1,800-square-foot townhouse where Bill and his wife live. Now, I don’t know about you, but whenever I think about the brothers living together for nearly a year with their spouses — and sharing that crib’s one-and-a-half bathrooms — I conclude the Rogers boys and their wives must get along a helluva lot better than me and my siblings and their spouses, who would kill me long before Election Day if I moved in with them just to run for Senate.
- So, I paid a little visit to the Rogerses’ cozy street to chat with residents about their ambitious new neighbor.
- I spent two lovely afternoons knocking on six of the seven front doors along a short stretch of road tucked into a golf course. The only door I didn’t darken was at the end of a walkway blocked by a gate. The next door neighbor said the gate was there because the occupant didn’t want anyone — even curious reporters — knocking on his front door.
- I asked everyone I met if they had ever seen Mike Rogers in the neighborhood.
- “He doesn’t live here, that’s his brother,” said the first gentleman I encountered.
- He said he did not know Mike Rogers had been using Bill Rogers’ address as his Michigan residence. When I told him Mike Rogers is building a home in White Lake, he posited: “He’s on the campaign trail, so he could be living there temporarily ’til his house is built.”
- Next, I met a woman who seemed surprised to learn a U.S. Senate candidate was living a few doors down. When I asked whether she had seen Rogers in the neighborhood, she said: “I can’t comment,” and closed the door.
- On my next visit, I encountered a man who also told me: “I’ve never seen Mike around here. Not one time.”
- The friendly fellow expressed concern a candidate might use an address where he does not live to qualify to run for office.
- “I don’t like it,” he said. “Not one little bit.”
- Everyone I spoke to asked me not to publish their name. I’m honoring those requests because they want to avoid any potential tension in a neighborhood that is so small it has seven units split among three buildings, which means every resident shares a wall with at least one neighbor.
- I presume Gustafson sought to dispel any doubts that Mike Rogers didn’t actually live with his brother by writing in his statement: “When Mike announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate and qualified for the ballot, he was a registered voter in Genoa Township in Livingston County. As one would expect, Mike is constantly traveling across Michigan meeting with voters.”
- Of course, I could be wrong, but when I sent Gustafson some follow-up questions, he wrote back: “The answers to your questions are within the document, thanks.”
- Gustafson apparently believes registering to vote at a residence owned by a relative is OK only if the residence is owned by a brother who lives in a townhouse on a golf course in Genoa Township.
- Regardless of whether Mike Rogers ever lived with his brother in Genoa Township, there’s still the question of whether Rogers committed a misdemeanor by using a home he could not occupy to register to vote in White Lake; whether he committed a felony by voting in the Aug. 6 primary in White Lake; and whether he can even legally vote for himself in the Nov. 5 election.
- Steve Liedel, an attorney who specializes in election law, told me: “If Mr. Rogers never actually resided in White Lake Township or does not reside in White Lake Township, that could give rise to legal questions about whether he is a qualified voter and authorized to vote a ballot in White Lake Township.”
- The crucial question for Rogers may be whether he ever lived in the White Lake house where he registered to vote.
- “If he never actually resided at the address in White Lake Township, there could be legal questions about his qualification to vote in that township,” Liedel said. “If an individual has evidence indicating that he is not a resident of White Lake Township, he also could be subject to challenge when appearing to vote in White Lake Township.”
- Delta Township Clerk Mary Clark, who is past president of the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks, said Rogers doesn’t qualify to vote in White Lake.
- “The only thing that would save him in that is if he has a camping trailer there,” she said, adding, “In a blanket sense, someone swears; they attest that they are a resident for 30 days prior to Election Day, they will not cast a ballot, they will not vote without being a resident of that municipality for 30 days. I don’t know how you do that when there’s no occupiable home on the property.”
- As anyone who has been paying attention to national politics for the last decade knows, even a whiff of possible voter fraud gets Republicans pretty excited.
- Rogers is no exception.
- “This questioning of the integrity of elections is a huge problem for the country, all of us,” Rogers said during a recent appearance on “The Hill Sunday” on NewsNation. “And my argument is they ought to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. That’s not what the states have been doing — Democrat-controlled states — have been opening it up, making it a little bit less transparent if you will.”
- Michigan Republican Party Chairman Pete Hoekstra also recently expressed concerns Democrats “will steal some votes” to help Slotkin win what appears to be a very tight race with Rogers.
- Citing the razor-thin victory margin in Rogers’ first run for Congress — he won by 111 votes in 2000 — Hoekstra said: “If it gets that close, we are afraid that they will steal some votes to make sure that he doesn’t win.”
- Now, I’m not trying to release the kraken, or suggesting anyone is trying to steal an election, or alleging that the game is rigged. But if Rogers is elected to the U.S. Senate by one vote, I wonder how Republicans will feel if someone tries to overturn the results by challenging the validity of a ballot cast by a certain former member of Congress who registered to vote using a house he doesn’t live at in White Lake?
See also: Michigan Advance: Where is Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood?, Michigan Advance: A new house is being built for Mr. Rogers in his not-yet-neighborhood, Newsweek: Michigan Republican Candidate Caught Living in Florida, MSNBC: In Senate races, GOP haunted anew with ‘candidate quality’ issues
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