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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with your host David Axelrod.

Peter Meyer was a little-known freshman representative in 2021.

When weeks after entering office, he voted to impeach President Donald Trump.

He spent the next two years targeting Meyer, who narrowly lost a Republican primary for renomination last year.

I spoke recently at the Institute of Politics with Meyer just 35 years old, and already a veteran of two wars, and the political wars at home.

Here's that conversation.

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Peter Meyer, great to see you, and especially to welcome you to the Institute of Politics. So glad you're here.

Thank you very much for having me. I feel a little intimidating because you've got a bunch of papers in front of you, and I'm clean desk.

Yes, well, you don't need any. You're an expert on yourself, so you don't need any notes. I'm just learning, and that's of course why I wanted to speak with you.

Because I think people, when they hear your name nationally, to the extent they recognize it, it has to do with the fact that you voted for impeachment, and probably lost your seat because of it.

People of Michigan recognize the name for other reasons.

So let's start there, and talk a bit about your family and Hendrick Meyer, who came to Michigan in the 1930s, who was your great grandfather.

Yes, my great grandfather came over from the Netherlands, kind of the turn of the century, and was a farmer, had a dairy farm, was a barber.

He had bounced around the country a little bit, going out to Washington State, and working in a foundry in some Apple orchards, and eventually settled in Greenville, Michigan, where in addition to that.

That was the 1930s.

So in the depression, he tried to get into the haircut business, built a barber shop in downtown Greenville, built the building a little bit bigger so that he could rent out the space next door, and it up not being able to find a tenant.

So we took $338 worth of merchandise on credit from A&P, and opened up a grocery store, and you know, 90 some years later, close to 90 years later, we have over 250 super centers in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and one of the larger, kind of family owned businesses in the US.

I live in part time in Southwest Michigan, so I'm very, very familiar with the story and the name, and I'm sure you're proud of, I can hear it in your voice, you're proud of that story, a great entrepreneurial story, great American story.

But I read somewhere that you also, when you were in high school, went by a different spelling of the name.

So it struck me that there was probably, there were probably ups and downs to being a mire in Michigan when you were a young kid growing up.

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