Rogers, representative for the district that includes East Lansing, said in an interview that he was leaving his seat to host a national radio program.
A written statement said he “had a career before politics and always planned to have one after.”
For Democrats gearing up for the 2014 election season, this might indicate a change in fortunes, if statistics are any measure.
Incumbents in the House of Representatives are reelected on average more than 90 percent of the time, but when a seat is vacated, the election is generally much more competitive.
Joshua Pugh, communications director for the Michigan Democratic Party, was hopeful for his party’s prospects in the district, which was tightly contested when Rogers won office in 2000 but won by wider margins in the last three elections.
“If we do our job and we turn out our voters, I bet it’s going to be very competitive,” Pugh said. “We’ve got a very strong bench of Democratic local-elected leaders in Ingham County and also Oakland County. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few of them step forward.”
Primaries to select each party’s candidate will be held in August. None have come forward as of yet to vie for their party’s ticket.
Rogers is chair of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, a position which thrust him into the national spotlight during last year’s revelation of the NSA’s collection of inordinate amounts of data from Americans.
He called the individual behind the leak, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, a “thief,” and suggested he might have been working with the Russian government, to widespread criticism from Snowden’s supporters.
Despite Rogers’ indication to leave the political sphere, it’s unclear if that will be a permanent decision. He coyly skirted questions this weekend on whether he might pursue a higher office — the presidency.
On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace pointed out that former President Ronald Reagan also hosted a radio program before running for the presidency, to which Rogers replied “Ronald Reagan used his platform on radio to run for president of the United States? I had no idea, Chris.”
Wallace asked if he intended to leverage the platform in the same way. He said he would “take it where it goes.”
