Mike Rogers (MI) wants to be Michigan's next U.S. senator, and he'd like to talk about how expensive everything has gotten.

He has a record on that. It's just not the one he campaigns on.

Across his fourteen years in the House, Rogers took $693,234 from oil and gas companies, their executives and their employees, according to OpenSecrets. Then he added more in his 2024 Senate run and again this cycle.

Here's what he did with the votes.

Three roll calls

July 28, 2005 — voted YES on the Energy Policy Act. The conference report passed 275 to 156, and Rogers was a yes. Jerry Taylor of the libertarian Cato Institute — no one's idea of an environmental group — said at the time that the bill was "essentially more of the same, with just more subsidy."

May 23, 2007 — voted NO on the Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act. The bill made it unlawful to sell gasoline at an "unconscionably excessive" price during a presidentially declared energy emergency, enforceable by the FTC and state attorneys general. It passed 284 to 141 with a bipartisan supermajority. Rogers voted no.

Sit with that one for a second. A bill that said don't let companies gouge Michigan drivers during an emergency drew 284 votes. Rogers was in the 141.

Dec. 18, 2007 — voted NO on the Energy Independence and Security Act. It passed 314 to 100 — again, a bipartisan landslide. The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry's chief lobby, opposed the bill. Rogers voted with the API.

Two of those three were blowout votes. Rogers didn't need to take the industry's side; the industry was losing anyway. He took it regardless.

The money didn't stop when he left Congress

Rogers left the House in 2015. The oil money followed him back.

Texas oil billionaire Timothy Dunn, CEO of CrownQuest Operating, has put $10 million into the Great Lakes Conservative Fund, the super PAC backing Rogers: $5 million in August 2024, then two checks of $2.5 million each in April and June 2025. That 2025 money was more than 98% of everything the PAC raised in the first half of that year, per its FEC filing. Dunn also gave $6,600 directly to Rogers' 2024 campaign.

We've written before about who Dunn is and what he's said, in the context of AIPAC's own multimillion-dollar interest in this seat. The short version: an out-of-state oil billionaire has put $10 million into the outside group carrying Rogers' campaign, and Rogers has not publicly spoken about it.

Chevron and its PAC have given the super PAC $200,000 and Rogers' campaign $15,000. ConocoPhillips and Marathon Petroleum gave directly in 2024.

Why this matters at the pump

Michigan drivers do not have a public option. When gas goes up, you pay it.

The 2007 price gouging bill would have given the government a tool to act when prices spike during an emergency. Rogers voted it down. When Michigan drivers got hit in the years that followed, there was nothing on the books because of votes like his.

And the 2005 bill he did vote for went the other direction — public money flowing to the producers.

That's the pattern in one sentence: subsidies for the industry, no protection for the driver.

The rest of the record

This is not the only place Rogers' money and his positions line up:

• He says he'll root out "every waste, every fraud" — while taking $234,000 from donors with fraud cases of their own.
• He's worth millions and is still cashing a taxpayer-funded state pension from his years in the Michigan Legislature.
• In 2021 he called Trump's election lies "third world dictatorship" behavior. He does not say that anymore.

The question for November

Rogers is asking Michigan to send him to a Senate that will vote on energy prices, on drilling, on subsidies and on what happens when companies gouge people during a crisis.

He has voted on all of those before. Every time, he landed where the money was.

Nearly $700,000 across his House career. Ten million more from a single oil billionaire into the super PAC behind him. Michigan gets to decide whether that record is a coincidence.

Source

"Mike Rogers took big donations from oil and gas," American Journal News, Aug. 14, 2026. Roll call records verified against clerk.house.gov. Photo: AP Photo/Paul Sancya, via American Journal News.