Michigan votes tomorrow. Polls are open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, August 4, and Jack Bergman is on the ballot in the 1st District, asking for a sixth term.
Before you vote, here is something you should know about how his office works.
Bergman's two top aides — the people you pay to serve you — run a private political consulting business on the side. Their House pay is arranged so that neither of them ever had to tell you about it. And two of Bergman's own constituents, a retired judge and a retired Navy chaplain, have asked the House Ethics Committee to investigate.
A side business you were never told about
Bergman's chief of staff, Tony Lis, and his deputy chief of staff, Amelia Burns, co-own a company called Right Way to Win LLC. They started it in 2021. Its website advertises a "full-service political and advocacy company" that does strategic planning, fundraising, messaging, digital and mail. "You name it, we do it," the site says.
The business is not small. According to campaign finance filings reviewed by The Detroit News, Right Way to Win has brought in more than $446,000 from state-level campaigns and committees since 2021, plus another $143,000 from federal candidates and committees.
Its clients include state Sen. John Damoose of Harbor Springs, and state Reps. Parker Fairbairn and Cam Cavitt.
Here is why that matters. Senior House staff who make about $150,000 or more a year have to file a public report every year listing their personal finances and any outside work. They are also capped on how much they can earn from outside jobs — the limit was $33,285 in 2025.
Lis has never filed one of those reports. Not once in nearly five years of running the company.
The pay trick
He didn't have to. And the reason is the whole story.
The disclosure rule is tied to a staffer's base rate of pay, not what they actually take home. Not long after Lis started Right Way to Win, his base salary was cut to fall just below the senior staff line. The rest of his money now arrives as lump-sum payments every quarter.
Do the math on last year:
- $144,200 in regular pay — below the disclosure line
- ~$77,000 in quarterly lump sums labeled "other compensation"
- $221,242 total, straight from taxpayers
That total is well above the threshold. Split up the way it is, it triggers nothing. My UP News reports that deputy chief of staff Amelia Burns is paid about $193,000 under a similar arrangement.
The House Ethics Manual addresses this practice directly, and the language is not subtle:
"The Standards Committee has cautioned, however, that Members should not use lump sum payments as means of enabling employees to evade the financial disclosure requirements, the outside earned income limitation and restrictions, or the post-employment restrictions.
For example, an intent to evade may be inferred when an employee's regular salary rate is below the applicable thresholds, but that employee is regularly given a lump sum payment in an amount that, if it had been paid in the form of regular salary instead, would have subjected the employee to one or more of these requirements or restrictions."
That is close to a description of what happened here. Experts who reviewed the arrangement for The Detroit News called it highly unusual and said it appears to use a loophole letting the two aides take senior-level pay without filing a disclosure or being subject to the outside income cap.
Lis says he has complied with House rules and that he and Burns are not making more than the outside income limit. He also said he never asked the House Ethics Committee whether the setup was allowed.
His defense: "It's not like a get-rich thing. It's just doing it for the love of the party and doing it for the love of northern Michigan, where most of our clients are right now." He added that he isn't "abnormal" on Capitol Hill, and that plenty of other staffers have side businesses.
Maybe. But you can't check any of it, because there's no disclosure to read. That's the point.
The part that looks like a toll booth
Now add Bergman himself.
Bergman has endorsed and campaigned for many of Right Way to Win's clients — candidates running in the same northern Michigan and Upper Peninsula turf he represents. Critics say that creates an obvious problem: a Republican running for the state House or Senate might reasonably conclude that hiring the congressman's chief of staff is how you get the congressman's blessing.
Norman Hayes, one of the two constituents who filed the complaint, put it plainly:
"To put a candidate in the position of having to purchase services from someone in order to get an endorsement, that's not cool."
Hayes is not some partisan operative. He's a retired Antrim County probate judge, a former prosecutor, and a two-time Republican chair of Otsego County who spent 35 years in public service before retiring last year. His co-signer, the Rev. Jeffrey Rhodes, is a retired 23-year Navy chaplain.
"I'm getting rather tired of seeing and reading about people in positions of trust that violate that trust, and it's all about the money," Hayes said. "There needs to be an investigation."
Their complaint, dated May 12, went to Ethics Committee chairman Michael Guest, a Mississippi Republican, and to the panel's top Democrat, Mark DeSaulnier. Bergman's office didn't respond to a request for comment on it.
Rhodes, who is a Democrat and says so, told My UP News he doesn't think that's the point: "It doesn't matter if you're an independent, Republican, Democrat, member of the Communist Party. What matters is the concern over the possible impropriety."
He also said the obvious thing about who's ultimately responsible:
"It's about the chief of staff, but the chief of staff works for Bergman. I mean, he's got to be cognizant of what's going on with his staff."
Republicans in the U.P. said it first
This didn't start with Democrats. It started with Bergman's own party, in February.
Bergman endorsed former state Rep. Beau LaFave in the 38th state Senate primary — after, according to state Sen. Ed McBroom, promising he would stay out of that race. A slate of U.P. Republicans rescinded their endorsements of Bergman's own reelection bid over it.
McBroom's statement was blistering:
"Jack promised me he would not be endorsing in this race. I wish I could say I'm surprised that he lied to me or that this is out of character for my time working with Jack, but it's not."
And then he named the pattern directly: Bergman "has a clear history of automatically endorsing Tony's clients, helping his own employee's personal business."
"Regardless, I will not be voting for Jack again," McBroom said.
State Rep. Greg Markkanen added the complaint U.P. voters have been making for years: "For years, Congressman Bergman has been criticized for being absent from the U.P. This only reinforces that concern."
How Bergman's office answered
This is worth reading closely, because it tells you what kind of operation this is.
Bergman's communications director sent My UP News a response credited to Lis — the taxpayer-funded chief of staff, answering through the taxpayer-funded press office. It called the complaint "dishonest attacks" from "a liberal Callie Barr donor." It called the concerns "yet another sad lie started by anti-trump Ed McBroom and wife-beating Dave Prestin." It described the people raising them as "radical activist groups" and "angry losers."
Dave Prestin is a sitting Republican state representative. (Michigan Advance, citing MIRS, reported that Prestin pleaded guilty to a domestic battery charge in 1994; Prestin said he acknowledged the wrongdoing at the time, regretted it, and has since learned from it.) Ed McBroom is a sitting Republican state senator. Both are being insulted, by name, in a statement issued through a congressional office.
That's not an answer to whether the pay structure was designed to dodge disclosure. It's an attempt to make the people asking go away.
He's available for consultants' clients. Not for you.
Here's the contrast that should decide this.
Bergman found the time to endorse, fundraise for, and campaign alongside candidates in state races across northern Michigan — including his chief of staff's clients.
He has not held a public town hall in his district since 2017. When constituents organized one for him last year, he didn't come. Asked about town halls, he compared the people he represents to "a bunch of middle-school kids" who "weren't paying attention to the teacher or the principal," and said: "we're not doing drama, sorry."
Meanwhile, in the district he won't show up in:
- An estimated 35,275 people in MI-01 are projected to lose health coverage because of the health care cuts he voted for.
- 40,801 households — about 11% of the district — rely on SNAP to buy groceries.
Those families can't get a town hall. A state legislative candidate who writes a check to Right Way to Win gets a congressman on the trail.
What happens next
Probably nothing you'll see for a while. House ethics complaints stay confidential unless the Office of Congressional Conduct finds potential wrongdoing — only then does it go to the Ethics Committee and become public. No one has been found to have broken a rule.
But you don't need a committee's permission to draw a conclusion. The facts aren't in dispute: two aides on your payroll run a political business on the side, their pay is structured so you can't see what they earn from it, their boss endorses their customers, and when Republicans and constituents asked about it, the office called them liars and losers.
Bergman's office looks like a business. We're the ones paying for it. We deserve better.
Source
- "Michigan congressman's top aide defends what critic calls 'shady' side gig" — Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News, May 7, 2026 (paywalled)
- "Ethics complaint filed against Jack Bergman by 2 constituents" — Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News, May 12, 2026
- "Does Bergman staffer's side-hustle violate ethics rules? What we know" — Schyler Perkins, My UP News, May 19, 2026
Photo: My UP News / WBUP-WJMN.
