Meet Mike

America was founded by troublemakers, contrarians, and stubborn believers in freedom. People willing to challenge the system and build something better. After a lifetime of service, Mike believes it’s time to lean in again. To bring people together. To defend the Constitution. To rebuild the promise of this country. Now is not the time to give up.

Raised in Gainesville

Mike is a fifth-generation Floridian, raised in Gainesville in the 1970s. His childhood was all sun-scorched summers at Crescent Beach, Camp Crystal Lake, fantastic music, riding his horse near Kanapaha, barbeque sandwiches at Chiapini’s, and tubing down the Ichetucknee.

Service across generations

Service runs deep in Mike’s family. After serving as a Naval doctor in Guam during the Vietnam War, his father became an anesthesiologist at Shands. While at Shands, he supported Veterans care across the street at the VA Hospital, a job he loved. His mother was a local realtor, helping families build their lives in this community. His stepmother attended university and medical school at the University of Florida. Today, both of Mike’s children are Gators.

Operation Desert Storm

Early in his life, Mike followed that legacy of service. At just 17, he swore an oath to the Constitution, an oath that still guides him today. He attended West Point, graduating six months before the Berlin Wall fell. He then went to Ranger School and became an infantry officer in the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii.

As a young lieutenant in Operation Desert Storm, Mike led soldiers in combat. He remembers flying low over the desert, dodging burning oil wells on the way into Kuwait City. It was a defining experience, one that shaped his understanding of leadership, sacrifice, and the true cost of war.

Warrior Centric Health

For Mike, the costs of war were never theoretical. Some of his soldiers suffered long-term health impacts from their service. Dreadfully, the cost of war became deeply personal for Mike and his family.

Mike's brother followed him to West Point and into the Infantry, developing into a strong, capable officer. Near Kandahar, as a Company Commander, he stepped on an IED. Eddie became a triple amputee.

Watching his brother’s long and difficult recovery has been a humbling, life-changing experience. It reinforced something Mike had heard his father talk about for years: the challenge of delivering quality healthcare to veterans. From Shands to the VA, his father saw it. Mike lived it.

That is why Mike became Co-Founder and now serves as Chairman of Warrior Centric Health, leading the fight to improve the quality of care for the military and veteran community, especially in the commercial healthcare system where most veterans actually receive care.

Lifetime of Service

Mike’s service shaped his willingness to stand on principle, even when it’s not popular.

Mike opposed the Iraq War, believing the constitutional standard for sending Americans into combat had not been met. He has been clear: the burden of those decisions falls on military families, in blood, broken bodies, and lives forever changed. Our Constitution is clear about Congress’s responsibility to declare war, and too often that responsibility has been ignored.

Beyond the Military

Beyond the military, Mike has worked and lived around the world, building expertise in international business, economic development, university innovation, and high-growth entrepreneurship. He has seen what works, what doesn’t, and how communities can thrive when given the right tools and leadership.

Back to Gainesville

After all of that, Mike made the choice to come home.

Back to Gainesville and North Florida. Back to a place full of possibility, even with all its challenges and contradictions.

Mike believes the solutions needed are not going to come from Washington, they are going to come from people who understand communities like this one.

Right now, though, something has to change. Lost is the ability to disagree without being disagreeable. There is no longer listening, not even sharing the same facts anymore. When national unity is most needed, the country is the (dis)United States.

Extreme wealth distorts every part of democracy, dividing, distracting, and rigging the system in its favor.

The truth is simple: take money out of politics, or the nation loses its democracy, freedom, prosperity, and its children’s future.

Running for Congress

Mike Klein is running for Congress because he refuses to give up on America.

Both parties' attention is captured by money and special interests. They are no longer serving the people they are elected to represent. The people of North Central Florida are paying the price for their corruption.

Life is not affordable for normal people anymore – gas, food, housing, healthcare, insurance and childcare. None of this is an accident and as a nation it is unbearable. Something has to change before our 250 year experiment collapses.

Only an Independent Congressman can lead reform in a House divided, where manufactured partisan infighting prevents badly needed system reform from happening. The uber wealthy and special interests are getting exactly what they are paying for.

If you believe that here in North Central Florida people have far more in common than what divides them, recognize that you are not alone. If you are exhausted by what is going on in Washington, DC, realize that you will have a viable alternative on the ballot.

The responsibility now is not to take the easier path but to fight for the harder right. We must stand up for our country and our communities or lose our future to oligarchs and special interests.

In the 250th year since the immortal signing of the Declaration of Independence, the revolutionary act might just be to use your vote to send Mike to Congress.

For Mike, this isn’t politics. It’s personal.

Leadership we deserve.

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Meet Mike

For Mike, this isn’t politics. It’s personal.

Leadership we deserve.

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