Former Michigan GOP co-chair creates campaign committee for Senate bid against Rogers

Bernadette Smith, who resigned recently from her post of Michigan Republican Party co-chair, has officially filed paperwork to form a campaign committee in a bid to take on former congressman Mike Rogers in a Republican U.S. Senate primary.

The Bernadette Smith for U.S. Senate committee was created on Tuesday, according to Federal Elections Commission records.

Last week, Michigan Advance reported that Smith had resigned from the party and was rumored to be gearing up for a Republican U.S. Senate primary battle against Rogers of White Lake. Although Smith had not yet filed paperwork to form her campaign committee, the Advance found that a cloned domain name of bernadettesmithforsenate.com had been registered and that the URL redirected to Smith’s existing website. The domain name was registered in late October.

Republican sources who spoke to the Advance said Smith had been saying she was running for the Senate as a Republican in the weeks leading up to her resignation from the party.

Former Michigan GOP co-chair appears poised to run for U.S. Senate against Mike Rogers

The new candidate filing confirmed the Advance’s reporting and Smith’s plans to take on Rogers.

However, she will likely have a hard time making the ballot given the amount of support that has been rallied around Rogers, and the difficulties a candidate would face trying to jump in this late in the game. Major party candidates for federal office in Michigan cannot access the ballot via a filing fee and must submit at least 15,000 valid petition signatures, up to 30,000 signatures total. Petitions must also be signed by at least 100 registered voters in each of at least half of all congressional districts in the state.

The deadline for filing those signatures is April 21, 2026. With snow already falling on Michigan, getting out now to collect that many signatures could be a feat.

Dennis Lennox, a longtime Republican political and communications consultant in Michigan, said Smith’s challenges include “all of the above.”

“She has no path to making the ballot and no path to victory,” Lennox told the Advance. “If I’m Mike Rogers, I’m not worrying about this, and I would be focused on keeping my eye on the prize. Mike Rogers has to be careful not to get distracted by Bernadette Smith and be forced into pivoting back to a primary dynamic that doesn’t exist … while the Democrats deal with their own divisive intraparty fight here.”

Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel in a statement believed that the new development could open up a messy primary on the Republican side if Smith were able to make the ballot.

“Mike Rogers is a loser who underperformed Trump by over 100,000 votes in 2024 because Michiganders didn’t want an out-of-touch Floridian representing them in the U.S. Senate,” Hertel said. “Now his flailing second campaign – in which Rogers has claimed there is no inflation, mocked Michiganders facing higher costs, and nearly lost a primary straw poll to a little-known ‘Stop the Steal’ ringleader – has apparently failed to earn the confidence of Michigan Republicans.”