Clay Higgins

Some Lesser Known Facts About Clay Higgins

• When Clay Higgins was six years old, his family moved from New Orleans to Covington, Louisiana, where his family started a business of raising and training horses.

• He joined the Military Police Corps of the Louisiana National Guard at the age of 18.

• He served for six years from 1979 to 1985 and reached the rank of staff sergeant.

  

• From his first marriage to Eloisa Rovati, he had a daughter, who died a few months after birth.

• Soon after his divorce from Rovati, she claimed in the media that Clay Higgins threatened her with a gun, which he denies. Rovati later died in a car crash.

• He then married Rosemary ‘Stormy’ Rothkamm-Hambrice in 1991 and adopted her child from an earlier marriage. They then had two children together.

• In 1992, Clay Higgins participated in Pat Buchanan’s presidential campaign. He then supported David Duke, a Ku Klux Klan leader, in his campaign for governor.

• After his divorce from Rothkamm-Hambrice in 1999, he married for the third time to Kara Seymour in 2003, but they later divorced.

• Once, he described Duke as a “Nazi” to a media reporter.

• Later, he worked as a manager at many car dealerships for some years.

• In 2004, Clay Higgins joined the Opelousas City police department as a patrol officer.

• In 2007, he was accused of beating a Black man, who was handcuffed, and then lying about it. Perry Gallow, the police chief, planned to take major disciplinary action against Higgins.

• Gallow wrote to the city council that Higgins used unnecessary force during a warrant.

• During the investigations, Clay Higgins was caught buying alcohol in his SWAT vehicle. He broke the department rules with another officer when they were on their way to a competition with other SWAT team members.

• During an internal investigation, he gave false statements but later admitted that he had hit the suspect. He said that he released the suspect after the assault.

• He resigned before any disciplinary action could be taken against him.

• Clay Higgins worked with the Port Barre police until 2010.

• In 2009, he married Becca and started living in Port Barre, Louisiana.

• In 2011, he joined the St. Landry Parish sheriff’s office.

  

• In 2014, he took the job and became a captain when the public information officer left.

• As the public information officer, Clay Higgins started making videos for Crime Stoppers. He first followed scripts but later spoke in his own style.

• He asked suspects to give up and sometimes named and threatened them.

• Soon, his videos became popular and went viral.

  

• In 2015, national media called him the “Cajun John Wayne” because of his tough image.

• During this time, Sheriff Bobby Guidroz warned Clay Higgins to be careful and avoid personal remarks about suspects. Guidroz also asked him to keep a professional tone in his videos. Guidroz told Higgins,
  

  Tone down his unprofessional comments on our weekly Crime Stoppers messages.”

• He once made headlines for making a video for the state police that upset suspect families and the ACLU.

• Guidroz had advised him to stop using rude and disrespectful words about suspects.

• In February 2016, he left the St. Landry Parish sheriff’s office.

  

• In September 2016, he joined politics as a Congress candidate, and during a media conversation, he said that he left the police for different reasons. He called police chief Perry Gallow,
  

  A peacock, a colourful, flightless bird.”

• Gallow, who had retired by then, disagreed with Clay Higgins’ story.

• After that, Guidroz claimed that Higgins’s comments in the videos showed a growing trend of disobedience and lack of discipline.

• Higgins once wore his uniform in an advertisement for a security company. He also used his badge and uniform on his personal website to sell T-shirts and shot glasses.

• Higgins registered his business using the sheriff’s office address, which was against the rules. All these actions violated department policies.

• Guidroz then claimed that Clay Higgins broke the rules by using his badge and uniform for personal gain.

• That same year, a media house reported that he made deals with other police departments for paid speeches.

• In one email, he asked for extra money for shopping for his wife and a payment for the fuel for his friend’s private plane. Clay Higgins requested these payments in cash.

• Reportedly, he continued his personal business during work hours using his official email without the knowledge and approval of his supervisors.

• He tried to hide his income from the IRS to avoid wage deductions for unpaid taxes, but it was unclear if this was tax fraud.

• Soon after leaving his job at the St. Landry Parish sheriff’s office in March 2016, Clay Higgins was appointed as a reserve deputy marshal in Lafayette, where reserve officers in Louisiana get training and work part-time.

• People from different backgrounds can join the reserve force.

• After leaving the St. Landry sheriff’s office in 2016, Chris Comeaux, a Republican campaign staffer, asked Clay Higgins to run for the U.S. House of Representatives.

• In May 2016, he announced that he would contest for Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District, but his home was in the neighbouring 5th district.

  

• He ran for a district where he did not live. House members only need to live in the state they represent, not the district.

• A Super Political Action Committee (PAC) led by the former chief of staff to Senator David Vitter supported Higgins’s campaign.

• In the primary results announced on 8 November 2016, Clay Higgins secured the second position behind Republican Scott Angelle.

• Higgins and Angelle faced off in a runoff on 10 December 2016. Higgins won the runoff with 56.1% of the vote.

• After the 2016 election, his second wife, Rosemary “Stormy” Rothkamm-Hambrice, who lived in Mississippi, sued him and claimed $140,000 in unpaid child support and interest.

• On 3 January 2017, Clay Higgins was sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives.

  

• In 2017, John Chautin, another officer involved in the 2007 incident, joined Higgins’ congressional office as a field representative. By 2025, Chautin worked as a district office director.

• In 2017, he said in the media that gun fear shows a weak society. He added that before the 1960s, selling guns was not controlled much, and it was easy for even children to buy guns if their parents provided them with money.

• In 2017, Clay Higgins supported an executive order issued by Donald Trump to stop travel from some Muslim-majority countries. He said that the order could stop terrorists from entering the U.S.

• He once shared in the media that he often sleeps on an air mattress on the floor of his Capitol Hill office.

• He is a fitness enthusiast and exercises regularly at a gym in his house.

  

• Clay Higgins voted with Republicans for the American Health Care Act of 2017, which aimed to replace parts of the Affordable Care Act.

• In December 2017, he also voted in favour of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

• Clay Higgins supports gun rights and the use of guns in political fights.

• In July 2018, House Democrats voted to end U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). However, House Republicans supported a resolution by Higgins and Kevin McCarthy to keep ICE.

• In 2018, six Democrat candidates, Rob Anderson, Mildred “Mimi” Methvin, Larry Rader, and Verone Thomas, Libertarian Aaron Andrus, and Republican Josh Guillory challenged Higgins.

• Clay Higgins received support from Donald Trump in this election and won, defeating all six challengers in the primary, so no runoff was needed.

  

• That same year, after protests over the police shooting death of Trayford Pellerin, Higgins posted on Facebook,
  

  He would “drop 10 of you where you stand.”

• In 2019, he retired as a reserve deputy marshal in Lafayette but continued working as a reserve officer in the Louisiana Attorney General’s office.

• In 2020, Clay Higgins was re-elected to the Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District with 67.76% of the vote. His opponents, Democrat Braylon Harris received 17.89% of the vote, Democrat Rob Anderson received 11.59%, and Libertarian Brandon Leleux got 2.75%.

• During the COVID-19 pandemic, he claimed that the Chinese Communist Party used COVID-19 as a way to carry on biological war.

• In January 2020, Higgins, his wife, and their son caught COVID-19.

• In May 2020, during a media interview, he referred to face masks as “bacteria traps” and stated that they did not effectively prevent the spread of the virus. He said masks were not effective because smells could pass through them.

• In December 2020, Clay Higgins supported a lawsuit called Texas v. Pennsylvania and became one of 126 House Republicans who backed it.

• The lawsuit challenged the results of the 2020 presidential election in which Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump.

• In May 2021, he wrote on social media that he did not support COVID-19 vaccines, mask rules, or vaccine passports.

• In July 2021, he introduced a bill to stop employers from making COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for workers.

• In August 2021, Clay Higgins challenged an Alaska critic to a fight in a ring. The critic once called him a “traitor.” The fight challenge was accepted, but it never happened.

• In 2022, Clay Higgins was re-elected to the Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District with 64.3% of the vote. His opponents were Republican Holden Hoggatt (10.9%), Democrat Lessie Olivia Leblanc (10.5%), Democrat Tia LeBrun (9.4%), Republican Thomas “Lane” Payne Jr. (1.8%), Independent Gloria R. Wiggins (1.4%), Republican Jacob “Jake” Shaheen (0.9%), and Libertarian Guy McLendon (0.7%).

• In 2023, he introduced House Resolution 140 to protect free speech from government control.

• On 15 November 2023, during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing, Higgins promoted a false theory that the violence at the January 6 Capitol attack was caused by FBI agents disguised as Trump supporters.

• He was one of 71 Republicans who voted against the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 in the House.

• In 2024, he was re-elected to the Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District with  70.6% of the vote. His opponents, Priscilla Gonzalez and Sadi Summerlin, each received 18.7% and 6.6% of the votes, respectively. Xan John received 4.1% of the votes in the election.

• On 19 March 2024, Clay Higgins voted against a resolution which condemned the illegal picking of children from Ukraine to Russia. He was one of nine Republicans who voted against it.

• He then introduced a bill to stop the shipment of Army Tactical Missile Systems to Ukraine.

• On 29 July 2024, he was named one of seven Republican members in a bipartisan task force investigating the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania.

• Clay Higgins is against abortion, and once he compared it to the Holocaust.

• In December 2024, he sponsored a bill (HR 10549) to close the Environmental Protection Agency. He claimed to support free speech and the First Amendment.

• In September 2025, after the killing of Charlie Kirk, Higgins wrote on X that he would punish Americans who, in his view, made rude comments about the killing.

• On 18 November 2025, Clay Higgins was the only member of Congress to vote against the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

• The bill required the U.S. Department of Justice to release all files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

• He stated that he opposed the bill because it could harm innocent people, like witnesses, alibi providers, and family members. He also said that releasing the files to the media could hurt these innocent individuals.

• He often attends the events organised by the groups, the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, which support violence against the U.S. government.

• Clay Higgins is against same-sex marriage. He once shared that the states should ban same-sex marriage, even though the Supreme Court declared that all states must allow it.

• He has spoken at many events hosted by some anti-government militia groups.