DAVID PARKER, THE CHAIRMAN AND CEO of the trucking company Covenant Logistics, has been a reliable Republican donor for decades. Over the years, he’s opened his wallet to most GOP presidential campaigns, as well as congressional candidates in Tennessee, where Covenant is based, and Georgia, where Parker has a home.¹

But this cycle, Parker and his wife decided to give a combined $10,000 to one House candidate in a far-off state. That candidate was Michael Alfonso, a 26-year-old running in Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District, who, if elected, will be the youngest member of Congress.

Alfonso has no special ties to Tennessee or Georgia. Nor does he have any prior political experience that would logically place him on Parker’s radar. What he does possess, however, is a key familial connection.

Alfonso is the son-in-law of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. And Parker has clear business before that department. Covenant has engaged the department for years, through its membership in the American Trucking Associations trade group.² Covenant has also pushed for the department to relax requirements that a driver possessing only a commercial learner’s permit must be accompanied in the front of the vehicle by a driver with a commercial driver’s license. To the chagrin of trucker-safety groups, Covenant Logistics (like a handful of other companies) won a two-year exemption from that requirement in 2024. Weeks after the Parkers donated to Alfonso, the Trump Department of Transportation renewed that exemption for another five years.³

When asked by The Bulwark about this donation to Alfonso, a representative from Covenant Logistics declined to comment. But elsewhere, Parker has praised the actions of the Duffy-led DOT and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration within it. “I see a lot of great things that are happening within DOT and FMCSA and everything that they are doing there that is just going to continue to allow this industry to get back to returns that we all want to be at,” he said in an earnings call in August, one month after donating to Alfonso.

Parker isn’t the only transportation-industry figure to have donated to Alfonso’s campaign over the last year. Corporate PACs, business leaders, and lobbyists with business interests before Alfonso’s father-in-law’s department have also given generously.

These donors include