REUTERS
DETROIT — The Senate race between Republican ex-Rep. Mike Rogers and Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin is neck and neck. Dead heat. Too close to call. But Rogers got a big boost Tuesday with an endorsement from the Michigan Farm Bureau — which hasn’t backed a GOP Senate candidate in nearly 20 years.
Rogers and Slotkin took part in an August forum with the bureau, vying to win the major endorsement, where the congresswoman touted her own farm.
“We grow soy and corn on about 300 acres, little bit less than 300 acres right now,” she said.
But property records show Slotkin’s parcel of land is much smaller. It’s just 10 acres, and aerial images show no corn or soybeans being grown.
Those records also reveal she continues to take a farming tax credit, despite doing no farming on the grounds. The home’s agricultural zoning confers a property-tax exemption, which Slotkin just claimed when she filed her summer taxes.
Critics say Slotkin’s tall tales about the family farm are what lost her the major endorsement that outgoing Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow earned the last two election cycles. The farm bureau, also known as AgriPac, had not endorsed a Republican running for a Michigan Senate seat since 2006.
“It’s no surprise Elissa Slotkin lost this key endorsement because she was caught lying about being a farmer,” Maggie Abboud, a National Republican Senatorial Committee spokeswoman, told The Post. “Mike Rogers has the momentum in the Michigan Senate race.”
The farm bureau has endorsed 11 new candidates in 2024, including Rogers, and 89 candidates overall. For president, it endorsed Donald Trump.
AgriPac also endorsed Republicans running in two close House races: Rep. John James, who is defending his seat from Democrat Carl Marlinga, and former state rep Tom Barrett in his open-seat race against Democrat Curtis Hertel Jr.
Taking an endorsement victory lap Tuesday, Rogers promised to represent farmers’ interests in the halls of Congress.
“Michigan farmers are struggling mightily under the current administration with rising input costs and burdensome government regulations, and now for the first time in American history we are importing more food than we export,” he said.
AgriPac urged its members to spread the word about Rogers and its other endorsed candidates.
“Talk to your neighbors, talk to your friends about getting out the vote for Friends of Agriculture,” said Washtenaw County farmer Mike Fusilier, AgriPac chair. “And put signs out on your property — that’s one thing Farm Bureau members have most other organizations don’t is land frontage on roads.”
A full list of the farm bureau’s endorsements is on its website.