U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers won't run for Senate seat

By Todd Spangler/Detroit Free Press

The soon-to-be-vacant U.S. Senate seat in Michigan — something of a rarity — isn’t exactly drawing an interested crowd.

On Friday, U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, a Howell Republican, took himself out of the 2014 race to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, depriving Republicans of the candidate many thought had the best chance of wresting the seat from Democratic control.

His departure leaves one prominent Republican candidate who has already announced her intentions, former Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, and one prominent Democrat who has already cleared his party’s field, U.S. Rep. Gary Peters of Bloomfield Township.

Speculation has even been circulating that U.S. Rep. Justin Amash — a libertarian firebrand from Cascade Township in west Michigan — may be backing away from a race after once being considered to be a likely participant.

Hanging over the race, however, are a few political facts: Peters enjoys vast support among Michigan’s still-powerful unions and has a base in key Detroit suburbs. And while Republicans have managed to win statewide office on several occasions, none has been able to win a U.S. Senate race since Spencer Abraham’s single-term victory in 1994.

Despite Michigan’s Republican governor, Legislature, attorney general and secretary of state, most political prognosticators consider the Senate seat a safe bet for Democrats to hold on to.

It was unsurprising then that Rogers, in a message Friday to supporters, said he plans to continue his service in the House, where he is currently serving his seventh two-year term.

“For me, the significance and depth of the impact I can make on my constituents’ behalf far outweighs the perceived importance of any title I might hold,” Rogers said, announcing his decision in an e-mail to supporters.

“I believe that from my current position, I am best able to have a real, positive impact on protecting our nation and her citizens,” he said, adding that once the Republican primary has concluded, he’ll work to help elect the GOP nominee, whoever it is.

Former Michigan Gov. Jim Blanchard, a Democrat and a key Peters’ supporter, said he wasn’t surprised by Rogers’ decision but believed him to be “the only really strong candidate they could have fielded against Gary.”

Before announcing his decision, Rogers spoke to Gov. Rick Snyder and state Republican Party Chairman Bobby Schostak, who said he has “no doubt that Republicans will field a strong candidate to win this seat in 2014.”

“His responsibilities as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee are critical to our national security — a role that, while at a tense time in our nation’s history, we can trust he will perform to the best of his ability,” Schostak said of Rogers.

Earlier this year, after Peters announced his was seriously considering a run, Rogers said much the same thing. But while Peters was considered almost certain to run, speculation quickly began about the likelihood of Rogers jumping into an uncertain race when he already holds a prominent leadership position in Washington.

Most observers thought Rogers, 50, would be a formidable candidate. A former FBI agent, he has made a name for himself, showing an ability to work across the political aisle with Democratic allies while remaining a staunch conservative.

In recent weeks, he has been a regular presence on political talk shows, defending secret surveillance programs as legal and necessary in the fight against worldwide terrorism.

With Rogers out and Amash’s participation uncertain, it now falls to Land — one of the state’s two members of the Republican National Committee — to use the relatively clear field to raise money and support in hopes of forestalling the prospect of potential challengers gaining ground and giving herself a head start for a general election campaign.

Bill Ballenger, the publisher of Lansing-based Inside Michigan Politics, said contrary to other political opinions, he believes Land — if she wins the Republican nomination — could find a way to beat Peters, if he, as expected, takes the Democratic nod.

Land, after all, will be the only person in the race who has won statewide election before.

Speaking to Ballenger for this week’s issue on Inside Michigan Politics, Land said Peters “has a voting record, starting with two terms in the state Senate” that she’d be eager to discuss with voters.

GOP Stresses Need For Mental Health Services, Despite Pushing For Repeal Of Aid

By Igor Volsky

Following Saturday’s tragic shooting in Tucson, Arizona, some Republicans have argued that 22-year old assassin Jared Lee Loughner was more affected by his mental illness than the nation’s lax gun control laws or Washington’s divisive and often times violent political rhetoric. “What will solve this problem is removing the politics from it and getting after the crux of this problem and that is somebody who needed mental health services and or legal intervention much earlier in his cycle toward violence,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) said this afternoon on MSNBC:

ROGERS: If we want to solve this kind of thing from happening, we have to intervene with somebody who has expressed tendencies toward violence, who has a pretty strong history of mental illness. And right now, we’re not talking about that at all. Everybody is talking about ‘oh, this is about people having guns, this is about political speech.’ None of that had a factor here. When you look at the evidence that has been collected up, this wasn’t about politics…If we want to solve this from happening in the future, you can talk about all the gun laws you want — that’s not going to do it. A bad guy is going to get a gun. What we have to do is intervene earlier in that cycle of violence when they have this kind of mental disability.

Watch it:

Newly-elected Rep. Allen West (R-FL) struck a similar note on his Facebook page, saying “The shooter was a very disturbed individual and it appears there were so many warning signs that he was going to do something horrible. We should be focusing on the mental health crisis in our country, not politics.” Indeed, as Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) pointed out this morning, the Tuscon shooting highlights the poor state of the nation’s mental health safety net, which often falls victim to state budget cuts during periods of economic hardship. Congress did not address the issue until 1996, and has been increasing access to mental services ever since — despite Republican opposition.

Fourteen years ago, the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-MN) secured passage of a “partial parity” law that “stopped insurance plans from being allowed to pay less to treat mental ailments as opposed to physical ones.” But the industry soon gamed the law by “limiting the number of mental health visits or days in the hospital.” On June 17, 2008, President Bush extended MHPA through the end of 2008, but didn’t sign full parity legislation until later that year as part of the TARP measure. At the time, 146 Republicans voted against full mental health parity, including now House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), and Rogers.

President Obama’s health reform legislation — which all Republicans now want to repeal — would go even further in helping Americans with mental illness. By 2014, families and individuals will be able to enroll in insurance through an expanded Medicaid program or the exchanges, where private companies will have to offer mental health and substance use disorder services as part of the essential package of benefits. The law also expands parity to a much wider pool, “making it possible for millions more people to get the same coverage for substance abuse and illnesses like bipolar disorder, major depression and schizophrenia as they would for, say, diabetes or cancer.” As Michael J. Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, told the New York Times shortly after reform was signed into law, reform “can change the mental health system in America and really give families and individuals an opportunity to get a level of access to care we could only fantasize about before this became law.”

M.C.L Comment: Once and for all Mike Rogers proves the Republicans don't practice what they preach if Rogers read what's in the bill he wouldn't be trying to repel the health care bill.