By admin 
Republican U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman was elected to a fifth term Tuesday, defeating a challenge from Democrat Callie Barr of Traverse City.
Bergman, 77, from Watersmeet leads with 59% of the vote, compared to Barr’s 38%, with 54% of the vote counted. Barr is the first woman nominated by a major political party for congressional office in Michigan.
Bergman, a former commercial airline pilot, operated a medical supply business and is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general who commanded the Marine Forces Reserve upon his retirement in 2009. In 2017, he succeeded Rep. Dan Benishek, a Republican from Crystal Falls.
Barr is a veterans attorney from Traverse City who argued that Bergman ignored the needs of families in northern Michigan and focused instead on partisan politics. She was a high school English teacher, but after her Navy husband, Matt, came home from Iraq with a traumatic brain injury, she became an advocate with Blue Star Families and the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers.
Bergman represents Michigan’s 1st District, covering the Upper Peninsula and much of northern Lower Michigan, including Traverse City. He serves on the House Armed Services Committee, the Veterans Affairs Committee and the Budget Committee.
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives from Michigan were reimbursed more than $207,000 last year for lodging and board costs for the days they spent in Washington for work, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars for individual lawmakers, according to a Detroit News analysis of federal data.
Bergman was revealed earlier this year as the top user of a congressional program that will reimburse the costs of lodging and meals for the days he spent in Washington, D.C., for work in 2023, according to a ranking of all Members of the U.S. House of Representatives by the Washington Post.
Bergman spokesman James Hogge noted the high cost of living in Washington, D.C., and that the congressman, a retired Navy lieutenant general and commercial airline pilot, paid those costs and more out of his pocket during the seven years since his take office.
In 2021, Bergman was one of three Republicans in Michigan who voted against certifying the 2020 electoral college votes of Arizona and Pennsylvania following the January 6, 2001 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
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