US Rep. Mike Gallagher won’t commit to attending RNC

U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Green Bay, will not commit to attending the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this summer. 

Gallagher announced last month that he will not run for re-election. The announcement came days after he was one of only four Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives to vote against impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Last week Gallagher led the push for a bill that would force TikTok’s parent company to sell the app or have it banned in the U.S. In an interview that aired Sunday, he told WISN-TV that he has more work to do to try to get it passed in the Senate. 

“There’s a lot of things I need to do this summer. We’ll see,” Gallagher said. “I got this legislation I’m passing. There’s 149 other recommendations. We’ll see what happens.”

Gallagher joked that he is “a has-been” now that he isn’t running for re-election. 

“No one cares what I think. I’m old news now that I’m not running again anymore,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ve even been invited to go to the convention or speak at the convention.”

Most Republican leaders and members of Congress will attend the convention, where the party will officially nominate former President Donald Trump. 

Gallagher could be seen as distancing himself from Trump by skipping his party’s nominating convention in his home state.

Gallagher has voted in line with Trump about 87 percent of the time when he was president, according to a running tally by the website FiveThirtyEight. 

But the two were sometimes at odds, notably around election issues.

Gallagher broke with Trump when the former president denied Russian interference in the 2016 election. And Gallagher was one of seven Republicans who did not support efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election. 

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, has said he will not attend the convention if Trump is the nominee.