Republicans Are Trying to Stop — And Even Sabotage — Bill Huizenga’s Potential Senate Bid

As the GOP tries to retain control of the House and Senate, Republicans in the White House and on both sides of the Capitol have a simple message for Michigan Rep. Bill Huizenga: Don’t run for Senate.

Huizenga hasn’t announced whether he plans to actually jump into the Michigan Senate race, but Republicans are worried he could complicate the primary and potentially hand Democrats one of the GOP’s top pickup opportunities in 2026.

For starters, Senate leadership and Trumpworld already have their preferred candidate: former Rep. Mike Rogers, who came close to winning Michigan’s Senate seat last year. While Rogers ultimately lost — albeit by less than a percentage point to then-Rep. Elissa Slotkin — Republicans still think Rogers is their best shot at winning the Senate seat this cycle.

And they aren’t mincing words with Huizenga.

“Democrats and Bill are the only people who want Bill in the Senate race,” one national GOP operative told NOTUS.

Rogers already has the support of Senate leadership and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He has also brought on Chris LaCivita, the former co-campaign manager of President Donald Trump’s 2024 bid, to help lead his run for the Michigan seat.

The White House Political Affairs Office has also been working to ensure Huizenga stays out of the race. One source familiar with the matter told NOTUS that the office recently talked with Huizenga over the phone to urge him to remain in the House. And two other sources told NOTUS that the White House’s political office has also been using intermediaries to urge Huizenga to stay out of the Senate race.

“Trump surrogates have made it very clear to him that he should not run,” a GOP operative told NOTUS. “A lot of this stems from the fact that nobody wanted to give him a gavel and that he’s upset about that. It’s a vanity project. He doesn’t have a strategic or campaign argument that shows he’s a better choice.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

A Huizenga spokesperson disputed that the White House and Trumpworld have discouraged him from running, saying the congressman has actually talked to the president twice about the race in the past two weeks. The conversations, the spokesperson said, were “positive.”

But Republicans point out that Huizenga has failed to impress potential campaign backers.

According to Federal Election Commission reports, Huizenga raised $704,000 in the first quarter of the year and has $865,000 on hand. Comparatively, in the first quarter of last year, Rogers raised more than $1 million. (Rogers has not had a fundraising quarter as a candidate this cycle, but he still has $523,000 left over from his previous campaign.)

In a sit-down with potential campaign backers two weeks ago, Huizenga was repeatedly pressed about his campaign and gave “no compelling argument as to why he should run for Senate and how he would beat Mike Rogers,” one source familiar with the meeting told NOTUS. Huizenga also admitted he still hadn’t done any polling in the race, this source said.

But in multiple meetings with prospective backers, Huizenga has argued that he has a leg up on Rogers with fundraising. He points to his time on the House Financial Services Committee, where he now serves as vice-chair, arguing he has access to wealthy donors — particularly in the crypto world, the source said.

But Trumpworld sources are actively working to keep crypto executives away from Huizenga.

According to four sources familiar with the matter, at the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas last week, LaCivita was trying to convince crypto executives that Rogers is the candidate with the best chance to win the Senate seat in Michigan, urging them to hold off on any donations to Huizenga.

LaCivita did not respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this year, before Rogers jumped into the race, the NRSC and Senate leadership met with Huizenga about a potential bid, as they do with most prospective candidates. In those early meetings, Huizenga had no polling and no argument laying out how he planned to win, one source said. And Huizenga virtually disappeared after the meetings, which this source said was internally interpreted as a sign that he wasn’t taking the job seriously.

“Mike Rogers outperforms Bill Huizenga in every single hypothetical general election match-up, yet Huizenga still wants to risk President Trump’s majority in the House and open the door to a third Democrat impeachment sham,” Nick Puglia, a spokesperson for the NRSC, told NOTUS in a statement.

The spokesperson for Huizenga said, “The only people in Michigan excited to see Mike Rogers lose again are Democrats.”

There is, according to the spokesperson, “no excitement or energy surrounding his candidacy from Republican primary voters.”

“Republicans don’t want to see Mike Rogers lose another campaign, squander another open U.S. Senate seat, and waste another 80 million dollars doing it,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The Washington establishment getting excited about a poll showing Mike Rogers losing again is a prime example of why Republicans haven’t won a Senate race in Michigan since 1994.”

But a poll conducted for the Detroit Chamber of Commerce shows Rogers up 44 points on Huizenga in a hypothetical primary.

“There is literally no one that wants Bill Huizenga to run for Senate except Bill Huizenga,” one House Republican leadership aide told NOTUS.

House leadership is taking a softer approach to ensuring Huizenga stays in the House — leaving the bullying and strong-arming to the Senate — but sources indicated they still want him to stay where he is.

“I’d prefer to see him stay because an incumbent obviously is stronger going into the election,” National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson told NOTUS. “But that’s a seat we’ll hold if he does decide to run for a different office. So it’s not something I’ll spend a lot of energy on.”

Hudson met with Huizenga when the rumors first started swirling about a Senate bid, a source with knowledge of the meeting said, but the two haven’t had any real conversations about a campaign since.

While House Republicans may not really fear that they would lose a House seat should Huizenga launch a Senate campaign, there is concern that they would be forced to spend more to defend the seat, two sources told NOTUS.

“This entire game has put his seat more at risk, and folks have been very frustrated with him on that front,” the GOP operative told NOTUS.

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Reese Gorman is a reporter at NOTUS.