Callie Barr

By R. R. Branstrom

rbranstrom@dailypress.net

ESCANABA — Callie Barr, Democratic candidate who last challenged Jack Bergman in the November 2024 election, will again be running in 2026 and is on the campaign trail.

Bergman, a Republican, has held the seat of U.S. House Representative for Michigan’s First Congressional District — a position that represents the entire Upper Peninsula and northernmost third of the Lower Peninsula in Washington — since 2017. His fifth and current term expires in January 2027, and though he is seeking another, Barr is aiming to unseat him and believes she can better serve Michiganders in the district.

A core component of Barr’s campaign this time revolves around bridging the divides of a very politically-segregated climate.

“It’s bridging the divide, but it’s also just building community,” Barr said during a recent press conference.

Many politicians, both while running and once in office, “stay where they’re comfortable” and “are only meeting with people that agree with them,” Barr said, explaining that it’s ineffective to only converse with one’s own party. She pointed out that both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of such habits.

“That only exacerbates the problems that we have,” Barr said. “So to me, you know, we want to have open forums. Everyone’s invited. Come. I’m not afraid to be yelled at. …I think so much of what we need to be doing is finding areas where we do agree, because in that final analysis, we agree on a lot. … We want to be able to afford things. We want to have a future for our kids where they can come and they can stay here if they want to.”

To reach a wider audience, part of Barr’s team’s campaign strategy is to venture down unorthodox avenues. She went to a biker rally recently, and intends to reach gamers on platforms like Discord.

One cause that’s high on Barr’s list and close to her heart is the needs of veterans. It’s the reason she got into politics.

Barr’s professional career began in secondary education. After she and her then-boyfriend, Matt, graduated from Cheboygan High School, Barr went to Central Michigan University and Matt enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. The couple married between tours. He was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and she became a high school teacher.

Barr left her work in the school system when Matt returned home from combat with injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She said that she became his primary caretaker and advocate.

“When I was advocating for my husband, it was really kind of my first foray into dealing with bureaucracy, into trying to navigate getting him the help that he needed,” Barr explained. “…I wanted to do more to advocate for policy change at the federal level, so I went to the University of Michigan Law School, graduating with a law degree, and for the next several years I worked as a business attorney while connecting veterans to free legal services.”

Vietnam veteran Dennis “Denny” Lautner of Traverse City, who supports Barr, is concerned about the damage that ongoing cuts to Veterans Affairs (the VA) will do: “You can’t even describe how overworked they already are,” he said during the July 10 press conference.

“They’re cutting access to health care for veterans so much … the mental health cuts are terrible,” said Justina Hlavka, an Air Force veteran who doesn’t want to see health services privatized. “You can’t just go to any therapist and tell them about how you had to separate the correct pieces of your friends and put them in the right bag. Not many therapists can handle that. That is a special group of therapists and psychologists that exist at the VA that we need daily.”

Hlavka said that Barr was “instrumental” in getting one of the therapists in Traverse City back to work at the VA after over 100 patients were left without care.

“Callie was there for us. Even though she didn’t actually hold political office, she did everything within her power to help us. I think that’s because she knows; she knows the fight in her bones, because her husband is also a veteran of the Marine Corps. She’s got the grit and the heart. She’s lived the experience,” Hlavka said.

Other fans of Barr are pleased with her reported determination to improve healthcare as a whole.

Though the nearly-900-page legislation is yet to be fully implemented and the fallout has barely begun, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which Bergman voted in support of and which President Donald Trump signed into law on the Fourth of July — will hurt the lowest-earning Americans the most, according to analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Changes to Medicaid eligibility as a result of the act are expected to leave many without coverage.

With fewer people able to afford medical care, smaller hospitals also may be at risk. An Ontonagon resident said that the Aspirus hospital there closed due to lack of income.

Though the closure of the Ontonagon hospital came in 2024 and was not a result of current cuts or the new bill, “that shows you the link between income and how long rural hospitals can survive,” said resident Marlene Broemer.

“Having to travel that much farther… puts (rural residents) at a disadvantage immediately,” said Julie Netzky, a nurse, who is also worried about the effects of cuts to Medicaid. “The other way that this impacts the whole community, and not just Medicaid recipients, is that when these folks from the rural communities come into the bigger hospitals, that increases wait times in the emergency department, it increases the population that the nurses are trying to serve, the doctors are trying to serve. To Denny’s point, these staff members — we are already stretched so thin. So even if you are there and you have something urgent, if you don’t have the staff to be able to help you, that’s going to have a negative outcome for you, regardless of if you’re private pay, Medicaid or Medicare. …I want to help Callie, because she is passionate about fixing this mess,” Netzky concluded.

About the entire future ahead, Barr said:

“It’s like we’re farmers staring at land right now that’s just dirt and manure. …But underneath all of that, there are the seeds for growth, right? And we can’t lose sight of that. So I think really keeping our optimism, being willing to push forward, constantly looking for solutions — and we got to get the right people in Congress. You know, we have to stop electing people that are more concerned with political contributions and Washington interest.”

Last November, Bergman held onto the seat in U.S. Congress by securing 59.2% of votes from Michigan’s First District. Barr earned 37.9%, while a Working Class Party candidate and a Libertarian earned 1.8% and 1.1%, respectively.