Justin Michal, a Grayling native and combat veteran who was medically retired from the U.S. Army after being injured during Operation Iraqi Freedom, is making his first run for Congress on a platform centered on constituent presence, cross-aisle dialogue, and a generational argument against incumbent Jack Bergman.
Michal, 41, sat down with the Leelanau Enterprise ahead of the August 4 Republican primary, in which he faced Bergman and Matthew DenOtter.
He has been on the campaign trail for more than 16 months and says he has logged nearly 100,000 miles across the district.
"This campaign is about the people of this district," Michal said. "I'm just the voice. You guys are the drivers."
Roots in the district
Michal was raised in Grayling, where his family has owned property since 1932. His mother also graduated from Grayling High School. He said growing up in the district and traveling its full expanse as a candidate has reinforced for him how vast and varied the 1st District's needs are — and how much of it he believes has been left behind.
Before military service, Michal was training at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, preparing for a career on the PGA Tour.
The September 11 attacks changed that.
Coming from a military family — his father is a retired Army colonel — Michal said the decision to enlist was immediate.
His father swore him into the Army, an experience Michal called one he will never forget. He deployed to Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom, serving 14 and a half months in combat with a Special Operations Group before sustaining injuries that led to his medical retirement.
That transition, he said, set him on a path toward conflict resolution — first with weapons, then with words.
"I found myself in conflict with a weapon, and then later I found myself in conflict with my words and my voice and my intelligence," Michal said. "It's been a long road."
The case against Bergman
Michal said he respects Bergman's nearly six decades of service to the country but argues the time for change has come. He said Bergman promised when he first took office to use his Marine Corps experience to unite the district — and that it hasn't happened.
"40% of the constituents have been forgotten," Michal said. "They're angry, and not in a violent method. They're angry at the fact that their voices are never heard."
He said the problem has grown to the point where even Republican voters feel unrepresented, and that presence — physical, consistent presence throughout the district — is the issue he hears about most on the trail.
Michal also raised the question of age, respectfully.
Bergman would turn 80 if elected to another term. Michal is 43.
He said the sheer physical demands of representing the largest congressional district east of the Mississippi — a 9.5-hour drive from the southernmost tip of Arenac County to the Keweenaw Peninsula — require a candidate who can keep pace with it.
"If you want to be productive, you've got to get out and have conversations with everyone you can in every county and all the small towns too," Michal said.
He declined to be pointed out about DenOtter beyond noting that in 15 months on the trail he has not seen him at Republican functions in the district, and that DenOtter only recently relocated from downstate.
"I've done over 74,000 miles in the district," Michal said. "The difference is, I'm present, and I go out and meet constituents."
FISA and constitutional concerns
Michal said he would have voted against the recent renewal of warrantless surveillance powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — a measure Bergman supported.
He drew a parallel to the Patriot Act, which he said is typically promoted as a tool against foreign adversaries but consistently ends up being used to surveil Americans.
He said advances in artificial intelligence make the concern more urgent, not less, noting that even AI companies have raised alarms about the direction of intelligence-gathering technology intersecting with AI systems without adequate regulatory guardrails.
"I just don't know why we continuously vote to support things that infringe on our constitutional rights," Michal said. "This is another example of that."
War powers and Iran
On the question of whether Congress should vote on military conflict with Iran, Michal said yes — and that the country has reached the point where a War Powers Act vote is necessary.
"If we're going to continue to have conflict in the region, Congress needs to vote on that," he said.
He tied the Iran situation directly to fuel costs, arguing that diesel prices are squeezing industries throughout the district in ways most people don't fully account for. He said the burden falls hardest on farmers, loggers, road contractors, and trucking operations — all heavily diesel-dependent — who locked in project bids before prices climbed and now have little recourse.
"People think it's just them paying a little more at the pump," Michal said. "But it's making it very difficult for businesses to maintain or hire new employees because of the extra cost of fuel."
Agriculture and the visa pipeline
On agriculture, Michal said his biggest concern for the farming community — cherry growers included — centers on the H-2A agricultural visa program. He said the process is expensive, unreliable, and leaves farmers uncertain about whether they will have the same experienced workers returning each season.
He argued that workers who return to the same farm year after year — pruning, picking, and operating equipment — are skilled laborers in every meaningful sense, even if the visa classification doesn't recognize them as such.
"I would really like to streamline the process of those visa applications and make sure farmers know who they're getting ahead of time," Michal said. He added that he wants to sit directly with cherry farmers and other growers to understand the specific pressures of each operation before pushing any broader policy.
Data centers
Michal said northern Michigan is squarely in the sights of data center developers because of its combination of abundant fresh water for cooling, rural land availability, and relatively low population density — and that most communities in the district are not prepared for what's coming.
He said he has already developed a baseline planning document available as a PDF on his campaign website, which he has shared with community leaders across several counties to help them begin organizing task forces and understanding the scale of what a large data center project actually means.
"It's almost predatory," Michal said of how developers approach rural communities. "People don't understand the scale, the scope, the magnitude — how much investment is there. It's hard to fathom."
He was clear that his role is not to tell communities whether to accept or reject data centers, but to arm them with information before developers arrive.
"It's not my place or position to tell a community what they need or what they want," he said. "My job is to give them the information they need to make the best decision possible."
A family legacy in public service
Michal closed with a nod to his great-grandfather, Edward Morrison, who served in the Michigan House of Representatives from 1926 to 1934. He drew a loose parallel between that era and the present, comparing the uncertainty of today — driven by artificial intelligence, political division, and rapid technological change — to the upheaval of the 1920s.
He said the deepest problem he wants to address isn't any single policy issue but the corrosive state of political discourse itself.
"We need to get back to remembering that we're all people at heart," Michal said. "We need to start caring about our neighbors regardless of what color their hair is, what vehicle they drive, and who they voted for in the last election."
He said he knows the call for bipartisan dialogue is not a popular one in the current political environment — but that he means it.
"It's difficult to stand on the red line and say we need to talk to people on the blue," Michal said. "There's not a lot of people that agree with that. But it's imperative that we do."
More information on Michal's campaign is available at his campaign website. The Leelanau Enterprise will publish interviews with all candidates in the MI-01 race ahead of the August 4 primary.
