The rules for where a politician has to live are not strict. A U.S. senator or a governor has to live in the state. A member of the House only has to live somewhere in the state — not in the district they represent.

That is a low bar. And a surprising number of Republicans on the 2026 ballot are asking you to trust them with your state or your district while their mortgages, ballots, planes and voter registrations point somewhere else.

This matters for a simple reason. The job is to know the place — the hospital that is closing, the plant that laid people off, the road that floods every spring. You learn that by living there. Here are eight Republicans whose own paper trails point somewhere else.

Cotton: the senator whose ballot went to McLean, Virginia

Tom Cotton has represented Arkansas in the Senate since 2015. Officially, he lives in a 905-square-foot apartment near the Arkansas River in Little Rock. He and his wife switched their voting address there from a house in Dardanelle in June 2019.

In December 2022, the Arkansas Times went looking for him there. His next-door neighbor said he had not seen Cotton at the building since the summer of 2021. "You'll never see him," the neighbor said. The neighbor across the hall, who moved in in February 2021, said she had never seen anyone go in or out of the unit and did not think anyone lived there.

Then the paper followed the records to Virginia:

• Cotton's own financial disclosure listed a 30-year mortgage worth $1 million to $5 million through a bank in McLean, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C.
• His wife, Anna, asked for her Arkansas absentee ballot to be mailed to a post office in McLean on at least three signed applications. For at least one election, the senator asked for his own ballot to be sent to the same McLean post office.
• As of 2022, Anna Cotton had voted absentee in Arkansas 11 times since 2016. The last time she had voted in person in Arkansas was November 2014 — the election that first sent her husband to the Senate.

Cotton's answer: "I've always had the home in Arkansas, obviously — first in Dardanelle, then in Little Rock. But since I was elected, like most members, I also have a residence in the D.C. area as well."

Senate travel reports showed his office paid for zero of his trips between Arkansas and Washington in 2021, and zero from January through September 2022. Over those same nine months of 2022, Arkansas's other senator, John Boozman, had his office pay for at least 30. Cotton's office did not respond when the paper asked whether campaign money covered his trips home instead, or how much time he spends in the state.

His Democratic opponent, Hallie Shoffner, a sixth-generation Arkansas farmer, made the same charge ahead of the primary. "Tom Cotton is a resident of Virginia, and when he comes home, which is rare, I mean, he talks to us like he doesn't like us all that much, that he thinks we're stupid," she told THV11.

Cotton hasn't held an open town hall in Arkansas since an angry one in Little Rock in April 2017. We've written before about how much of his energy goes to fights that never touch an Arkansas kitchen table.

Rogers: the Florida mansion

Mike Rogers (MI) left Congress in 2015. By the time he decided to run for the Senate in Michigan in 2023, he was living in Florida and registered to vote there, the Michigan Advance reported, citing the Detroit News.

His Florida home is a 4,751-square-foot house in Cape Coral valued at $1.7 million. It was his official residence until he decided to run. He took a $50,000 Florida homestead tax exemption on it for 2022 — a tax break you claim on your main home. That same year he pulled a $327,000 renovation permit on it.

When he came back to run, Rogers registered to vote at a Brighton house owned by his sister-in-law. He bought a one-bedroom, 728-square-foot cottage in White Lake Township for $295,000. During his 2024 campaign, that house was demolished and a new one built in its place.

He lost that race. Now he is running again — and he went right back to Florida. The Detroit Metro Times found that Rogers spent more than a week in November 2025 campaigning from his Cape Coral mansion: a Naples fundraiser on November 19, then a string of interviews that appear to have been recorded inside the Florida house. In the middle of that stretch, on November 24, he told a Michigan radio audience, "my whole life is here [in Michigan]." He was in Florida at the time.

Rogers had listed the Cape Coral house for sale soon after launching this campaign. The listing was pulled off the market on November 22 — during that same Florida stretch.

Lahn: "Iowa First," Kansas often

Zach Lahn is the Republican nominee for governor of Iowa. His slogan is "Iowa First." His voting record says Kansas.

According to KMUW in Wichita, Lahn voted in Kansas in November 2018, November 2020 and the August 2022 primary. He did not register to vote in Iowa until October 17, 2024. Iowa requires a candidate for governor to have lived in the state for two years — and moving his registration that day let him clear the bar for 2026.

The same year he registered in Iowa, his wife bought a home near Wichita and declared on a mortgage document that it was her primary residence — not their house in Belle Plaine, Iowa. A year later, the couple sold the Wichita home to an LLC for $1.

Lahn still keeps a home in Kansas and flies there often in a plane he owns through an LLC. By mid-May, the Des Moines Register reported, flight logs showed the plane had made 37 flights from Iowa to Wichita since October 1, 2025. During the primary, the Des Moines Register found his plane spent 75 nights in Wichita and just 51 at his Iowa property. Lahn says the trips are to see children he and his wife have from earlier marriages.

We covered the rest of the story when the Wall Street Journal took apart his "Iowa outsider" act.

Tuberville: voted in Florida, wants to run Alabama

Tommy Tuberville is the Republican nominee for governor of Alabama. The Alabama Constitution says a governor must have lived in the state for the seven years before the election.

Walton County, Florida, election officials confirmed to Lagniappe that Tuberville registered to vote in Florida on May 24, 2017, voted by mail there in November 2018, and stayed on Florida's rolls until March 20, 2020, when he asked to come off. His own Alabama tax returns say he became at least a part-year Alabama resident on August 1, 2018 — three months before he cast that Florida ballot.

The house at the center of it is a beachfront home in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. We laid out the details when a lawsuit first challenged his eligibility.

The question of where he actually lives has never been decided by a judge. He has survived two party challenges and three lawsuits from his primary challenger, and in August a judge ruled that an Alabama law strips courts of the power to remove a candidate from the ballot at all. As of August, a separate challenge brought by two military veterans was on appeal before the Alabama Supreme Court.

This is the same man who called election integrity "the most pressing issue before Congress."

Three House members who don't live in their districts

House members don't have to live in their district. These three have made the most of that.

Mariannette Miller-Meeks represents Iowa's 1st District. Her longtime home is in Ottumwa, which redistricting put in the 3rd. She registered to vote at a fellow Republican state senator's house in LeClaire, then switched to a Davenport apartment just before the June 2024 primary — in a complex partly owned by David Barker, who had given her campaigns $52,900. At the same time, the Gazette found, she and her husband had taken a homestead credit on the Ottumwa property for the past two tax periods, and her 2022 and 2023 congressional disclosures listed a mortgage on her "personal residence in Ottumwa."

Asked about it in an October 2024 debate, she said: "In Iowa, land is valuable and we hold onto it, so I have a property there." Asked afterward how much time she spends at the Davenport apartment, she answered: "I spend most of my time in Washington, D.C." She said she would not tell people where she spends the night, citing credible death threats against her.

Then in July 2025, she quietly moved her voter registration back to Ottumwa — outside the district she is asking voters to re-elect her in. The public found out in December, when the Quad-City Times first reported it. Her campaign said she moved back "to be by her husband's side."

Eli Crane represents Arizona's 2nd District. When he first ran in 2022, his own federal election filings listed his home in Oro Valley, a Tucson suburb that is not in the district — it sits in the 6th.

Jimmy Patronis won a special election for Florida's 1st District, the Pensacola area, in 2025. When he ran, he lived in Panama City, in Bay County — outside the district. His answer was that his Panama City home sat just 15 miles outside the district's borders, and that he had recently leased a place inside them. Since taking office, every town hall he has announced in his House newsroom has been by telephone.

Marshall: the cabin and the beach house

Roger Marshall is running for a second Senate term in Kansas. The Kansas City Star reported that he sold the Great Bend house where he raised his kids 10 days after being sworn into the Senate. The home he now calls his primary residence is a cabin in Stafford County. In 2024 the Star reported that his beachfront house near Sarasota, Florida, was worth more than eight times as much.

Between 2021 and 2024, his Senate office billed taxpayers $18,886 for at least 14 official trips through the Sarasota area. When the Star asked what government business those trips were for, his office did not answer. We broke down the trips, the boat lift and the listing last month.

What the records show

Tom Cotton asked for his Arkansas ballot to be mailed to a post office in McLean, Virginia — the town where his 2022 disclosure showed a mortgage of at least $1 million through a local bank — and as of 2022 his wife hadn't voted in person in Arkansas since 2014. Mike Rogers (MI) claimed a Florida homestead exemption in 2022 and spent more than a week of this campaign working from his $1.7 million Cape Coral house. Zach Lahn voted in Kansas as late as 2022 and his plane spent 75 nights in Wichita during the primary against 51 at his Iowa home. Tommy Tuberville voted in Florida three months after the date he says he became an Alabamian. Mariannette Miller-Meeks is registered to vote outside the district she represents, Eli Crane's own 2022 filings put his home outside his, Jimmy Patronis ran from a home 15 miles outside his, and Roger Marshall's office billed taxpayers $18,886 for trips through the part of Florida where he owns a beach house.

Sources

• Tom Cotton doesn't live here — Ryan Tarinelli, Arkansas Times, December 21, 2022.
• Where is Mr. Rogers' neighborhood? — Jon King, Michigan Advance, January 30, 2024.
• Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers campaigns from Florida as carpetbagger questions return — Steve Neavling, Detroit Metro Times, January 2026.
• GOP governor candidate Lahn frequently flies to second house in Kansas — Brianne Pfannenstiel, Des Moines Register, May 14, 2026.
• Tuberville registered Florida voter through March 2020 — Scott Johnson, Lagniappe, June 3, 2026.