While Barrett is in the midst of orientation, and is still learning his way around, he has public service instilled in his fiber. Joining the Army as a teenager was “the biggest thing I’ve done in my life,” he said. “I didn’t know that 9/11 was going to happen a year into my service, and then all of the downstream deployments and everything that came after that. It was a major motivator when I ran for the state legislature ten years ago. I got elected and became the only Iraq War veteran in the Michigan House of Representatives, then I did a whole term in the State Senate as the only Iraq War veteran.”
The military has clear benefits, which Barrett saw firsthand. Prior to joining the military, he had “never been on an airplane…and by the time I retired, they paid me to fly helicopters, and I logged 1,000 hours flying really cool helicopters. So those are things that really could only happen in the military. But it came at great commitment for me as well. I always felt like I got a lot out of the Army. They got a lot out of me.”
Those decades of service, in both Iraq and in Lansing, are what Barrett wants to bring to Washington, D.C. “The big reason why I retired from the Army in order to run for Congress, was I was so just demoralized by what happened in Afghanistan,” he said. “Then they came out with the vaccine mandate that people were so opposed to. It just felt like one thing after another was just being done to degrade the morale of the military.”
The solution, he said, is to “shake that up.” President Donald Trump’s selection of Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense is a step in the right direction, he added. “We have senior military officers who need to be held accountable and replaced, in many instances, for failure, certainly in Afghanistan and otherwise,” he said. “So I think that there’s a real desire out there by not just Pete Hegseth, but by the rank and file in the military, and civilians who have an opinion about this. We’re a country that puts our civilian leadership in charge of the military, and they ultimately answer to the Commander-in-Chief, the whole apparatus that exists that way. And so we definitely need to shake up. We need new leadership, and I’m excited to see where that goes.”
Solving America’s recruitment crisis is a top priority. “People are less inclined to sign up to join and potentially fight and die for something that they don’t believe in,” Barrett said. “And there’s seemingly, in the culture, been this drift away from the American exceptionalism that we grew up with, and my generation had, and the generations before me. I think we need a kind of a renewal of that patriotic spirit that seems to be a sagging in morale in the country as a whole.”
“War is a devastating thing that really we ought to be very discriminating in how we go about it,” Barrett said. “I think we’ve gotten too relaxed about how we look at the challenges that war presents.” One example is the staggering number of suicides in the veterans community in the aftermath of the War on Terror. “That’s something that people just don’t have an appreciation for as we total up the total cost of war,” he said. “It’s not just that we’ve got this amazing military, which we do, and we’re going to go stomp out whoever our adversary is. What’s the human cost of that, both from our military and the direct engagement side? What’s the human cost on the other side of that equation, the human costs on the bystander, civilian side of it, and what’s the long term, downstream, effect of how that’s going to affect peoples’ lives, with mental health and suicide and everything.”
The Barrett family’s legacy of predates the incoming lawmaker’s service in Congress, and his years in the military and in state government. Barrett’s great-grandfather, Louis Rabaut, represented Michigan in Congress for years — as a Democrat. That legacy is reflected in how Barrett plans to approach his time as a lawmaker — and he will even work out of the same office in the Longworth House Office Building that his great grandfather had.
“I’m very willing to work with anyone in the delegation, anyone who’s elected by their constituents, certainly the senators from Michigan, I want to have a professional relationship with, and make sure that we’re adequately working on the issues that we feel are important for the people of our districts or for the state,” he said. That includes working with Elissa Slotkin, his incoming senator, despite the contentious race the two had last cycle.
“We spoke on the phone last week before I came out here for orientation,” Barrett said. “We’re putting together plans for an effective transition from the district office, equipment, case files, all those things that need to happen to adequately make sure that we’re representing the constituents on the nonpartisan side of the responsibility.”
Below is a transcript of our interview with incoming Rep. Tom Barrett, lightly edited for clarity.
Washington Reporter:
Let’s start off with your two campaigns for Congress. You ran in 2022 against Elissa Slotkin and you came up just short then. In 2024 you were running in this now-open seat; what did you do differently this time? How did your previous campaign help you become a better candidate?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
So much knowledge of the type of capacity of running a congressional campaign. Having never done it before, I had a compressed time window two years ago; the redistricting was delayed considerably, and so it put me in a compressed window to actually campaign two years ago, when I ran against the incumbent. She outspent me by orders of magnitude of what I had. There were a variety of factors there. This time, having a familiarity of the district, having run previously, knowing some of the players, knowing the ground game, being able to execute a little bit more with a longer runway was really helpful. I also had a little bit more equity of funding. Wasn’t entirely parity, but not the orders of magnitude difference that it was in 2022. The incumbency advantage wasn’t there, and just the issue set that we were able to run on and stay focused on, I think was what helped us out in this race.
Washington Reporter:
If your name was not Trump or Tom you came up just short in Michigan as a Republican this year in competitive races. What were you able to do that got you to the finish line, where others came up short?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
It’s hard to say, not being in those races, what their unique circumstances were, but I do think that we had the buy-in from the National Republican Congressional Committee, from the super PACs. They were heavily invested early in our race. In the Senate race that was delayed, and I think it just got to be not enough at the end, because they didn’t start spending early enough to have a better impact. And you never know if you do it a different way, how the chips would have fallen. But I think that differential; that certainly had an affect on the outcome that we saw in that race.
Washington Reporter:
Do you think there are opportunities to work with Slotkin now that she’ll be a senator? You ran against her and now you succeeded her, and now she’s your senator? How’s that been?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
We’re figuring it out. We have a meeting scheduled. We spoke on the phone last week before I came out here for orientation. We’re putting together plans for an effective transition from the district office, equipment, case files, all those things that need to happen to adequately make sure that we’re representing the constituents on the nonpartisan side of the responsibility. I’m very willing to work with anyone in the delegation, anyone who’s elected by their constituents, certainly the senators from Michigan, I want to have a professional relationship with, and make sure that we’re adequately working on the issues that we feel are important for the people of our districts or for the state.
Washington Reporter:
At the end of her race, Slotkin was almost sounding like a Republican, talking about repealing EV mandates. As you were talking to the manufacturers and just drivers even, in Michigan, what was the significance of that issue?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
Electric vehicle mandates were a really big deal, certainly throughout Michigan, but really regionally. In the district I was running in, General Motors is the biggest employer, arguably General Motors, Michigan State University, and the state of Michigan are the biggest employers in the district. And there’s such a manufacturing fabric in Michigan tied to the auto industry, even if it’s not the principal General Motors itself, there’s suppliers downstream of them that are big in the economy, employ a lot of people, and rightfully so, people were, were and are very, very concerned about these mandates that would effectively make cars unaffordable, enrich our foreign adversaries, and layoff, God knows how many workers in Michigan, because the entire ecosystem would collapse. I’m not one that wants to stop innovation from happening, but I am somebody who doesn’t want the government pushing that unnecessarily, and people don’t want to buy them, undercutting jobs and employers and workers that have thriving opportunities, and doing it all at the expense of our national security, enriching our foreign adversary. So it is a big deal. I think Slotkin saw that and responded, and did something to try and mitigate that, because I think she knew it was a vulnerability.
Washington Reporter:
You’re wearing a reminder of your military service on your lapel. How did that inform your current service, your service in the Michigan legislature, and in campaign?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
The biggest thing I’ve done in my life was to serve in the army. I joined as a teenager. I didn’t know how my life was going to unfold from there. I didn’t know that 9/11 was going to happen a year into my service, and then all of the downstream deployments and everything that came after that. It was a major motivator when I ran for the state legislature ten years ago. I got elected and became the only Iraq War veteran in the Michigan House of Representatives, then I did a whole term in the State Senate as the only Iraq War veteran. I chaired the Military and Veteran Affairs Committee in the state House. It was and is a major part of who I am, and what’s motivated me to run, what’s motivated me to serve, what’s motivated me to keep going in this. I have a lot of strong feelings about the direction that specifically this administration has taken the military in and what they’ve done. I’ve got a lot of strong opinions about what happened in Afghanistan, and the challenges the military is facing, and what we need to do to confront our adversaries around the globe, and what that means for us. So this is coming from a standpoint of wanting to make sure veterans are appropriately and adequately taken care of when they come back home. From a state standpoint, we didn’t have votes on foreign engagement and how we’re going to send troops places, but we had the responsibility of making sure our veterans are reintegrated appropriately and are given the care and treatment they deserve and benefits and all of that to now doing it on the national security stage, and from a member of Congress standpoint, I will get to vote on are we going to send troops into this conflict? Are we going to put more emphasis on a national security standpoint here or there? What are the effects of war? War is a devastating thing that really we ought to be very discriminating in how we go about it. I think we’ve gotten too relaxed about how we look at the challenges that war presents, and I’ll give you one example of the things that people may not recognize or realize. During the 20 year long War on Terror, we lost 7,000 American troops in combat activity in those two conflicts, Iraq and Afghanistan, the associated other areas we were in, but we lost 30,000 more soldiers, members of the military and veterans, during that same period of time to suicide. So 7,000 combat action deaths, and 30,000 from suicide. And I think that’s something that people just don’t have an appreciation for as we total up the total cost of war, and what that looks like, and what it means, you got to think about that. It’s not just that we’ve got this amazing military, which we do, and we’re going to go stomp out whoever our adversary is. What’s the human cost of that, both from our military and the direct engagement side? What’s the human cost on the other side of that equation, the human costs on the bystander, civilian side of it, and what’s the long term, downstream, effect of how that’s going to affect peoples’ lives, with mental health and suicide and everything. So war is definitely something we need to use, but we need to use it sparingly, and that’s a big, a big part of what’s going to shape my mindset coming here as a member of Congress.
Washington Reporter:
Now, even though you won’t have a role in confirming any nominees to all of these positions, what do you as a veteran think about someone like Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense? Would seeing a guy like him rise to the top help stem the recruitment problems that we’ve seen in the military, some of which predate the Biden administration? What’s your view as a veteran on incoming, potential Department of Defense leadership and now also as a congressman?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
I want to certainly not get over my skis on the House vs. Senate responsibilities here, and what that’s going to look like. But to your point, we do have a recruiting crisis, and we do need to shake up the leadership in the Department of Defense. We have still unanswered and unaccountable people from what happened in Afghanistan and what that has done and how it’s shaken the morale of the military. The big reason why I retired from the Army in order to run for Congress, was I was so just demoralized by what happened in Afghanistan. Then they came out with the vaccine mandate that people were so opposed to. It just felt like one thing after another was just being done to degrade the morale of the military. So we need to definitely shake that up. We have senior military officers who need to be held accountable and replaced, in many instances, for failure, certainly in Afghanistan and otherwise. So I think that there’s a real desire out there by not just Pete Hegseth, but by the rank and file in the military, and civilians who have an opinion about this. We’re a country that puts our civilian leadership in charge of the military, and they ultimately answer to the Commander-in-Chief, the whole apparatus that exists that way. And so we definitely need to shake up. We need new leadership, and I’m excited to see where that goes.
Washington Reporter:
Do you think that you can also serve as an inspiration to the current teenage Tom Barretts who are looking at a career in the military?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
I hope that my story can hopefully be an example to younger folks looking to maybe join the military, who can see what that looks like. I was a citizen soldier for a long part of the later part of my career, serving in the state legislature, serving the Army at the same time and balancing those two responsibilities. I had never been on an airplane until I joined the Army. And by the time I retired, they paid me to fly helicopters, and I logged 1,000 hours flying really cool helicopters. So those are things that really could only happen in the military. But it came at great commitment for me as well. I always felt like I got a lot out of the Army. They got a lot out of me. I think anybody looking to join should go in eyes wide open to the challenges that are going to be there and the hardship that it will be, but also in the pride that you can have. I think we also need to bring back pride in our country. I feel like there’s been a drift away from that perspective and idea that America really is this unique and exceptional country, and we’ve kind of drifted away from that, and I think it’s also having an effect on our recruiting, because people are less inclined to sign up to join and potentially fight and die for something that they don’t believe in. And there’s seemingly, in the culture, been this drift away from the American exceptionalism that we grew up with, and my generation had, and the generations before me. I think we need a kind of a renewal of that patriotic spirit that seems to be a sagging in morale in the country as a whole.
Washington Reporter:
An added benefit that you have is that Rep. Lisa McClain was just elected to be the number three House Republican. We did an interview with her on Monday, and she’s talked about how she wants to be a huge asset for all of the Michiganders. She talked about getting Rep. Jack Bergman on steering, which just happened this morning. What committees are interesting to you, based on the experiences you’ve had at home and abroad?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
Committees that meet my experience and interest would be certainly what I’ll be asking for. I’ve been telling people who’ve been asking me that, it’s been three weeks or so ago now, the Speaker was in my district at the end of the campaign. I told him that as long as my seat is on the floor and not the gallery, I’m okay.
Washington Reporter:
You’ve gotten that confirmed, I hope?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
Yeah. Now I’ve got to, like, rescind that. My background in the military, my background working on veterans issues, those are two interests and things I have a lot of passion for. I was also the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the State Senate. So certainly there’s a lot of overlapping jurisdiction between the state and federal for transportation and infrastructure type of work that needs to be done. So that’s another interest I have. And then from there, I’m open to a lot of things, because when I was in the state legislature, I sometimes got on committees that I didn’t expect or ask for, and they ended up becoming things that I found a great deal of interest in and could really get into the details on and find some real satisfaction in doing. So I’m open to a lot of things and I’m hoping to get committees that reflect my background, as well as some of the important things for my district and that put me in the best position going forward.
Washington Reporter:
Your governor, Gretchen Whitmer, famously campaigned on ‘fixing the damn roads,’ I think the assessment is that she hasn’t fixed any road. So what are your priorities on infrastructure?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
Really driving down the cost of the bureaucratic overload of things. Like, for example, if you want to replace a bridge, you’ve got to get a whole new environmental impact study on whatever endangered frog is living there in the transient stream. It’s like, if it hasn’t been disrupted with this bridge, why would a new bridge disrupt it? But you got to go back through all that bureaucratic approval, you’ve got to put 38 bike lanes into a two way street and, like all this stuff, and just really paring down some of the wasted effort around the for lack of better word, the brick and mortar side of the infrastructure, that really should be the highest cost, and still is. But a lot gets sucked up into these other things that end up taking out the efficiency of really just getting roads, bridges, airports, highways and the other infrastructure needs in the country, in the best position we can. A lot of our infrastructure is aging. It’s decades old. It was built as we built out the infrastructure like the interstate highway system and the other infrastructure things that we did two generations ago. And now it’s really showing its age and wear, and a lot of states have kind of gotten by just doing whatever the cheaper fix is. That, over time, compounds it into a worse problem. It’s like a lot of other things in your life, if you don’t address the root cause, it ends up being worse in the long run. So taking a comprehensive look at that, doing the best we can, and paring down some of the costs associated with regulatory burdens or other things that are driving the cost of infrastructure.
Washington Reporter:
You’d mentioned Michigan State, which is a critical part of your district, in terms of being an employer and in terms of the voting population there. We saw Trump in particular really shift young voters to the right, including young women. What advice do you have to Republicans on how to mobilize those college-aged voters?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
You’ve gotta lean into it. You gotta definitely know what’s out there. We didn’t go into my campaign expecting to win the university vote at Michigan State, but certainly expecting to make progress there. And I think it definitely came out in the outcome that it mattered. We spent a great deal more time on campus than I did in any prior campaign. We’ve put a lot of effort into it. Brian, my campaign manager, had that as a focus of his: what are we going to do to manage the expectations on campus, and what are we going to do to lean into it? I spent more time there. We hosted events with college students. We tried to really be as engaged as I could, and I think that went a long way to help me.
Washington Reporter:
You’re a young candidate; was that an asset for you?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
Yeah, and, I think being relatable to people helps. I’m not in college anymore, as much as I wish, but being able to have some relatability, and be a little more casual and familiar with the folks that we were targeting on campus helped.
Washington Reporter:
What do you make of the cratering Muslim and Arab support for Democrats in Michigan? It’s not like the GOP is going to suddenly become anti-Israel, but what went on there?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
So there’s not a tremendously large Muslim or Arab population in my district, but there is some. Most of that was in Wayne County, particularly in Dearborn. That’s one of the leading areas of the country, frankly, and certainly in Michigan, where that was a big difference maker. But I think that the coalition that exists in the Republican Party today is far more broad than it’s maybe ever been. And I think a lot of that is owed to the work that President Trump put into building that coalition. You got the fraternity guys. You’ve got Arab Muslims. You’ve got Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., you’ve got Elon Musk, you’ve got suburban security folks, you’ve got black men as a constituency. You’ve got Hispanic men. And then you somewhat have some of your mainstay Republican coalitions, your evangelicals, your business, small government, low taxes coalition. So it’s a very, very broad coalition now that comes with some stretching that can cause consternation within it at times. But I also think it presents a, hopefully, clear message that if you’re right of center culturally, and you want secure borders, and you want a strong economy, and you want opportunities going forward, and you want less foreign engagement from the vantage point of boots on the ground and bullets in the air, then we’re your party. And if you’re an elite, hyper-interventionist, like a lot of the neocons of yesteryear, you are now finding your place in the Democratic Party. Theirs is a different coalition, and I think ours is better. I’m comfortable being a part of it and excited for what that’s going to have going forward.
Washington Reporter:
What are your goals between now and next Election Day?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
I can tell you that there are 713 days until the next election. Getting integrated into my district and being accessible and accountable to people, earning their respect, even those who may not have voted for me this most recent election. I’ve got to represent everybody in my district. This is a responsibility that I take seriously. There are almost 800,000 people in my district and I have to be their voice. That doesn’t mean that we all agree on everything, but ultimately, I won this election to be their voice here in Washington, D.C., and now it’s time for me to go out and do that the best way I can, and to hopefully go back home and build that trust and build that relationship along the way in my district in the most effective way I can. I think that’s the best I can do, and provide robust customer service through my constituent outreach and constituent relations, as people call with issues or problems they’re facing, to help get them the resources and assistance that they need through the federal government for whatever their problem there is. And getting the bureaucracy to respond to a lot of the things that they may have going on. Doing the job and going back to my district to build those relationships while doing the job is the most important thing I can do.
Washington Reporter:
How has orientation so far been for you?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
I’ve certainly learned a lot, learning the geography of the campus. Getting a little familiarity with what the different personalities are, in my own conference, what that looks like, who’s been here, who’s done different things. Some people are more on the appropriations, budget, fiscal side of things. Other people are a little more on the other policy side of the coin, if you will. Just getting a familiarity with people that way. It’s important learning about my freshman colleagues, like we’re, maybe 32 Republican freshmen, not many of us flipped our districts. There is camaraderie with those members. I’m excited to get started, open my office on January 3, get sworn in, and really get to the work of doing the things we have to do for the country. We don’t get a lot of time, so we’ve got to make it work. And so our leadership has been pretty persistent about reminding us of the pace of things that are going to come as soon as we get sworn in, and what that’s going to look like, and building that out, building expectations ahead of time, so that we’re not unfamiliar with the lift it’s going to take, and the the time it might take to be here to do some of those heavier lift things that are going to be necessary to really just do what we got to do for the country.
Washington Reporter:
You’re wearing a tie with tons of little fish on it; is there any significance?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
It’s fish. My kids picked this out, and they love it. This is their favorite tie. I brought like, three ties with me for orientation. This one my kids love. And so they enjoy what I wear. I’m ultimately excited to have a little bit of an experience with my family out here. I’ve been telling people, my kids have never flown on an airplane. We promised them they could fly out here for swearing in. They are super excited.
Washington Reporter:
Are you flying the plane?
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
I wish. I’ve never actually flown an airplane. I’ve only flown helicopters, but the gravity’s the same. My kids are more excited about flying on an airplane than they are about their dad getting elected to Congress. My kids are 11, 10, 7 and 3 years old, and they are excited to be coming out here and experiencing this. We live in a pretty small town in a rural area in Michigan, and so this will be a whole new adventure for them. I’m hoping to bring them back here periodically and share a little of the experience. My family is gonna live in the district. I’m gonna commute back and forth, and that’s a big priority for us as well, is to remain in the district that I’m going to be representing, because I want to be the representative in Congress for my district, and not the member of Congress representing Washington back home. So we’re going to live there. That’s where I live. This is where I work. And I have a respect for this place and respect for the gravity of the situation. But fundamentally, I’m not gonna move my family here. We’re gonna live back home. I want to expose my kids to some of these opportunities that they’re gonna get, and hope that they have an appreciation for it too.
Washington Reporter:
You’ve served overseas. This is much less of a commute to get back to Michigan, and hopefully it’s less dangerous than the Middle East.
Rep.-elect Tom Barrett:
It’s easier to fly back to Michigan. Even if you get the middle seat on the airplane, you’re still flying commercial. Airline travel is miserable no matter what, but there are worse things, it turns out.
Washington Reporter:
Hopefully, you’ll get on Transportation and Infrastructure and you can make it a little bit less miserable for everyone. Thanks so much for chatting today.