Meet The Michigan Congressman—And Billionaire’s Son—Who Voted To Impeach Trump

^Not a lot of politicians get to vote on impeaching a sitting U.S. president in their first week of office. But Peter Meijer—a junior Republican representative from Michigan and an heir to the multibillion-dollar Midwestern supermarket chain that bears his family name—was one of them.

“What we saw on Wednesday is that the President is unfit for office,” Meijer said on national television on January 11. The 33-year-old voted to impeach Trump two days later, one of the ten Republican House members to do so, including the third-highest-ranking GOP politician, Liz Cheney. Democratic Rep. Jason Crow claimed that more Republicans would have voted to impeach the president but they were “paralyzed with fear.”

In the aftermath of Wednesday’s vote, Meijer and his colleagues have been on high alert, according to the congressman. “Our expectation is that someone may try and kill us,” Meijer told MSNBC and added that he and other GOP members who voted to impeach the president changed their daily routines. Meijer also admitted that some on Capitol Hill have even purchased body armor, which is considered a reimbursable expense for members of Congress.

If he wants to take extra security measures, however, Meijer has more resources than an ordinary politician—he comes from a family of billionaires. In 1934, Hendrik Meijer, a Dutch immigrant and Peter Meijer’s great-grandfather, founded Meijer’s Grocery in Greenville, Michigan, with $340 worth of merchandise on credit, equivalent to about $6,600 today. Peter’s father, Hank, and his uncle, Doug, the reclusive brothers who Forbes estimates are worth a combined $10.2 billion, took over the business from their father, Fred, in 1990. By the next year, sales were an estimated $5 billion. The brothers remained co-CEOs until 2017; Doug is now a member of the executive board. Hank remains executive chairman of the $18.1 billion (2019 revenues) company, which has 256 stores in six Midwestern states, including Michigan, where it will soon help administer Covid-19 vaccines. Although Rep. Meijer’s father, Hank, was close friends with President Gerald Ford—who was raised in Grand Rapids and represented Michigan in Congress—he has largely avoided pursuing politics.

Similarly, Peter Meijer has stayed away from the family business—though he has said that he stocked shelves at Meijer supermarkets as a teen. Instead, he has chosen a path of public service. Meijer was deployed to Baghdad in 2010 for a little over a year as an intelligence advisor for the U.S. Army. After graduating from Columbia University in 2012 with an undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology, Meijer worked in Afghanistan as a director at the International Safety NGO Organisation, an international charity that supports the safety of aid workers in conflict zones such as Syria and Somalia. In 2017, Meijer received his M.B.A. from New York University and after a stint in Detroit real estate development, he decided to enter Michigan politics.

Meijer launched his campaign for a congressional seat to represent Grand Rapids in July 2019, shortly after Michigan Rep. Justin Amash criticized the “hyperpartisan environment” within Congress in a scathing op-ed in the Washington Post and announced he was leaving the Republican Party and becoming an independent. Meijer won the seat vacated by Amash, who announced he was in favor of impeaching President Trump in May 2019 and was the only non-Democrat to vote for it in December 2019. 

“It may have been an act of political suicide,” Meijer said of his vote to impeach Trump.

Thanks to his family fortune, Meijer is now part of an exclusive club of ultrawealthy politicians, from Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy to Nelson Rockefeller and Michael Bloomberg, who is worth $54.9 billion despite spending more than $1 billion to defeat Donald Trump in 2020, including his own failed presidential run.

Meijer’s choice to pursue a political career hasn’t cost him a stake in the family fortune. According to a financial disclosure form he filed in 2019, the congressman has access to multiple trusts, including a blind family trust with more than $50 million in assets. (Federal election disclosures report assets in ranges, with the highest being $50 million or more, meaning Meijer’s stake in the family trust could be worth considerably more.)

Meijer declined Forbes’ requests for an interview, but he is almost certainly among the richest politicians currently in office. J.B. Pritzker, a Hyatt Hotel heir, is the wealthiest, worth $3.4 billion, followed by President Trump, with a net worth of $2.5 billion. Another billionaire, coal tycoon Jim Justice, a Democrat-turned-Republican, just started his second term as West Virginia’s governor and has a net worth of $1.2 billion.

While Meijer hasn’t spent as much as Pritzker did on his gubernatorial campaign—he poured more than $170 million into his successful 2018 run—he did loan himself more than $1.4 million to fund his congressional bid. He also received donations from more familiar names such as late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, who donated $5,600 each—the maximum contribution allowed for a campaign committee. Meijer’s uncle Doug Meijer also contributed $5,600.

So as one fortunate son’s term comes to an end, another is just beginning his. But Peter Meijer is well aware that his vote to impeach Trump could shorten his time on Capitol Hill. “It may have been an act of political suicide,” he told the Detroit Free Press on January 14, “But it’s what I felt was necessary for the good of the country, to have accountability in this moment but also to set a path to moving forward.”