Gallagher Bows Out, Others Line Up

U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisconsin) during a press conference in Sturgeon Bay, Jan. 26. Photo by D.A. Fitzgerald.

While U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) was in Sturgeon Bay Jan. 26 to ask the U.S. Postal Service for answers on mail delivery interruptions at the Sturgeon Bay post office, the Peninsula Pulse asked the four-term congressman if he were running for reelection.

“That’s the plan,” he said. 

That plan, Wisconsin learned, has changed.

Gallagher, who turns 40 on March 3, announced Feb. 10 that he won’t seek a fifth term in Congress representing the 8th Congressional District that includes Door County.

“Eight years ago, when I first ran for Congress, I promised to treat my time in office as a high-intensity deployment,” Gallagher said in a statement. “Through my bipartisan work on the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, chairing the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, and chairing the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, we’ve accomplished more on this deployment than I could have ever imagined.

“But the framers intended citizens to serve in Congress for a season and then return to their private lives. Electoral politics was never supposed to be a career and, trust me, Congress is no place to grow old. And so, with a heavy heart, I have decided not to run for re-election.” 

Within hours of Gallagher’s announcement, former state Sen. Roger Roth, an Appleton Republican who ran for lieutenant governor in 2022, announced his plans to run, with at least two more considering the race. One of those is Door County’s state senator, André Jacque (R-DePere), who told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that running for the 8th District seat is “certainly something I’ll take a hard look at.”

NPR reported that on the Democratic side, at least three candidates are contemplating joining the race. 

The filing deadline is June 3 for Congressional candidates to be on the Aug. 13 primary ballot.

According to Ballotpedia, the 8th Congressional District has been red for more than a decade. The last time a Democrat won an 8th District seat was in 2008. Gallagher, first elected in 2016, received at least 60 percent of the vote in each general election he ran  – 72% in 2022.

Gallagher thanked the people of Northeast Wisconsin for what he described as “the honor of a lifetime.

“Four terms serving you has strengthened my conviction that America is the greatest country in the history of the world,” he said. “And though my title may change, my mission will always remain the same: deter America’s enemies and defend the Constitution.”