Austin Rogers brings local roots, knowledge of the Hill to CD 2 contest

Work in Congress pulled Austin Rogers away from the Panhandle, but an opportunity to serve could bring him back home.

After years helping craft legislation on foreign surrogacy, college sports and judicial appointments as a General Counsel in the Senate, he now hopes to cast votes as a sitting member of Congress. The Mosley High alumnus in January filed as a candidate to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Neal Dunn in Florida’s 2nd Congressional District.

“I present the perfect combination of having the values of this district, having gone to Bible college, having gone to law school, and then having gotten experience in the Senate and in Washington, but also having the values that perfectly reflect this district,” Rogers told Florida Politics in an exclusive interview.

“I don’t think any other candidate in this race has that unique combination of features.”

Rogers most recently worked for U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, Florida’s senior Senator. But before working for the Naples Republican, he served as chief counsel for the Republican office in the Senate Judiciary Committee, both for former Ranking Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and the current Committee Chair, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley.

“For an attorney in Washington, DC, being Senate Judiciary Committee staff is kind of the crème de la crème. It’s one of the more desirable positions in Washington,” Rogers said. “But really, at the end of the day, I wanted to serve my home state people.”

That’s why he took notice when Dunn, who hails from Rogers’ own hometown of Panama City, announced he wouldn’t seek another term, Rogers took notice. He spoke with Scott. The Senator hasn’t endorsed anyone in the race but was supportive when Rogers discussed leaving his job in Congress in order to run.

Rogers initially ended up in the Washington area because his dermatologist wife, Hala, did her medical residency there. But he has long wanted to return home to Florida and raise their two children, and the third one already on the way.

He stresses that his personal values were all developed in CD 2, from attending school in Lynn Haven to playing soccer tournaments in Tallahassee. He returns home with a family, a law degree from Duke University, theology degrees from Duke and Wheaton College and years of service on the Hill. At just age 35, he may have the most experience dealing in the day-to-day work of Congress.

That means he understands some of the complicated legal issues that will be facing Congress in coming years. He said that includes some increasingly nefarious exploitations of U.S. law by figures tied to the Chinese government. He has worked with Scott on addressing a rising number of surrogacy services catering exclusively to Chinese nationals who want American born children.

“Because of our current birthright citizenship jurisprudence, those are going to be American citizens, and they’re being shipped to China,” he said. “It’s a massive human trafficking issue, and it’s a massive national security threat. I certainly think there’s a bipartisan appetite to get something in this vein done.”

But there isn’t bipartisanship necessarily on how to address the matter. Rogers acknowledges complicated questions about how enshrined birthright citizenship is in the Constitution. He has also been involved in conservative arguments about how absolute the right may be, noting it stems from the 14th Amendment and was crafted chiefly to guarantee citizenship for the children of slaves.

Still, he said solutions may be found to the surrogacy issue without entering a complicated debate on constitutional law. He helped craft the SAFE KIDS Act, introduced by Scott in November, that focused on regulating the international commerce involved.

“I don’t think anyone in their right mind — Democrat, Republican, left, right, center — would say that we shouldn’t ban international commercial surrogacy agreements with Iran or with China or with North Korea,” Rogers said. “So that is something that’s low hanging fruit that I would like to get done on Day 1.”

He also sees a need to explore name, likeness and image use for college athletes, another issue where lawmakers’ positions don’t always fall neatly along partisan lines.

But Rogers also stresses his foundation is that of a conservative. He considers the Panhandle part of the Bible Belt, and his own religious upbringing a piece of that fabric.

“I am part of the Bible Belt, and went to Bible college and studied theology, and so I think I’m the perfect representative of this district’s values,” he said.