Callie Barr

MARQUETTE — Callie Barr, who previously threw her hat in the ring against Rep. Jack Bergman in the 2024 race to represent Michigan’s First Congressional District, has come back into the race for 2026 full of renewed vigour and commitment.

Barr, who lives in Traverse City and was raised between there and Cheboygan, is a former high school English teacher and former business attorney. She has spent much of her time advocating for military service members and their families through the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving and Blue Star Families. She mentioned that growing up in a military family led her to see the strength of love for each other.

“Coming from a military family, the one thing that I saw, like the strength of a Marine platoon, the strength of any military family was not our collective hate for any enemy. Its strength was in our love for one another. I know we’re in a time of very divisive politics, but I know what it’s like to come from a small town where we have to rely and count on one another. In so much of last race (and) in this race is again, building community and talking to one another (matters,) because at the end of the day, we all want the same things,” said Barr. “We want to be able to live the lives of our choosing. We want to be able to provide for our kids, have a roof over our head, to have a job that pays the bills. These are simple things that we want, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have them. We’re at a period right now (with) the greatest income inequality ever. There are the wealthiest people in human history right now hoarding, and they’re trying to convince us that these resources are scarce so that we fight against each other. I don’t want to be distracted, right? This right versus left thing is all a distraction.”

After losing to Bergman in the 2024 election cycle, Barr says that for this time around, she’s more fired up than ever because she believes the people of Michigan’s First Congressional District deserve proper representation.

“I think that it has become only more important and more urgent to run again. This is our seat. We deserve a voice and representation. Jack Bergman has not had a town hall since 2017 and it shows. It shows what he’s willing to support. This guy’s all about Washington interests instead of representing us,” Barr said of her opponent. “And you have to look and say, in the past eight years, has he made our lives better? And the answer to that is no. When you won’t even meet with your constituents, how can you know what they need and what’s impacting their daily life?”

Barr said she spent her campaign in 2024 traveling around the district to hear the concerns and desires of the constituents who live here, and her campaign strategy this time around isn’t changing much from last time, as she and her team plan to continue holding events and visiting people in every area of the district in order to make their campaign about the people who will be represented.

“(Our team), I think we’re scrappy, we’re smart, we’re strategic. I think that we have people that just want to help all over this district. Last time we were in a Democratic primary, and while there’s someone in the race this time, I think we have a lot of people with us right from the start. And because of this (Big Beautiful) bill that was just passed that Bergman voted for, I think it’s really gotten people paying attention because the impacts are going to be devastating. Really (we’re looking for) a much stronger field presence this time around. I mean, we did a lot of events last time, but I think we’re looking at more of that, more of that in the sense that we want to uplift the voices of the people in this district, we want to hold food drives. We want to build community. This race isn’t about me. It’s about the people here,” Barr explained. “I was talking to someone just last week about food insecurity. We have people right now going hungry because of the cuts to USDA…The point is, how can we help people here now, today, and how can this campaign be more than just, ‘Hey, I’m Callie’ and more like, ‘How did we make (an) impact for our community during this race,’ something that I can look back and say, ‘You know what? No matter what, we fed people. We brought people together. We got them. We (had) the right networks established so that we can continue to do good work in our district.’ That’s outside of politics.”

Barr explained some of the different issues she wants to work on and potential solutions to some, including access to housing and healthcare. “We have a housing shortage. We need really smart federal funding that’s not bogged down in a bunch of red tape, so we can get funding to developers and organizations in our district to help build homes. I think we need to be looking at manufactured homes. We need to look at local zoning, regulations and restrictions, and also who’s buying our land and our homes. We don’t want private equity coming in and pricing us all out,” elaborated Barr. “Healthcare, we need a really strong public option. We also just need to have hospitals here, so I’m very concerned about the cuts to Medicaid because even if you don’t get Medicaid, it funds our rural hospitals. When you have cuts to that, you might not have a hospital and then it doesn’t matter what insurance you have. We really need to be thinking about what that looks like. I think going after insurance companies is really important. We need to give medicine back to doctors. We should be able to negotiate any drug price. These are things we know, so we need to do it. We hear a lot about it, but we actually need to be committed to doing it.”