Rep. Paul Mitchell didn’t see his House seat as as long-term investment.
The Michigan Republican announced Wednesday that he’ll leave Congress after 2020, when his second term ends. That after loaning himself a total of about $6.6 million in two bids to win a House seat, over two tries. With Congress in session an average of about 145 days a year, that amounts to about $11,300 a day.
Mitchell spent about $3.5 million in 2014, his first congressional bid, running for the open 4th District seat, based in central-northern Michigan. Mitchell lost in the Republican primary to now-Rep. John Moolenaar.
Two years later Mitchell found success in the 10th District, based in Michigan’s “thumb” north of Detroit, along Lake Huron. Spending $3.1 million, Mitchell nabbed the open seat in 2016.
Mitchell’s retirement from Congress is a departure from many other self-funders, who stick around Washington for decades after lucrative careers in business or other endeavors.
Mitchell in a House floor speech on Wednesday said he’s leaving due to bitter partisanship and lack of progress by lawmakers on pressing public policy issues.
“A career in Washington was never my objective,” Mitchell said, fighting back tears. “It appears to me that rhetoric overwhelms policy and politics consumes much of the oxygen in this city.”
Mitchell was the owner and operator of a for-profit allied-health school, Ross Medical Education Center, and the chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition of Michigan.
But departures from Congress by wealthy individuals after relatively short stints isn’t unprecedented. Another Michigan Republican representative, Dave Trott, retired from the 11th District early this year after serving only two terms. Trott, a former foreclosure attorney, spent nearly $5 million to win his seat in 2014, beating a Republican incumbent congressman in the primary.
Trott left after the 115th Congress, saying he was done “dialing for dollars.”
