McMORROW

MARQUETTE — Another candidate running for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat is Mallory McMorrow, a Democratic senator who has served in the Michigan Senate since 2018.

She currently serves as the Senate Majority Whip, the first woman in the history of the state to hold the position, as well as Chair of the Economic Community Development Committee and Vice Chair of the Oversight Committee. During her time in office, McMorrow has authored the state’s first-ever Extreme Risk Protection Order, or “red flag” gun violence prevention law known as Senate Bill 83, back in 2019.

McMorrow’s experiences in the Michigan Senate have heavily influenced her decision to run for U.S. Senate. Seeing the kinds of change her campaign and service have brought to the people of Michigan, she wishes to take that success to Washington, D.C. and fight for the state in the same ways that she has for the past seven years.

“I think it does come from serving in the Michigan Senate for the last seven years. We have such an incredible success story on what we did here in Michigan. I ran for office for the first time in 2018. I ran against a Republican incumbent and nobody thought we had a chance, and we ended up rallying more than 500 volunteers over the course of a year and a half, and we swung a district (by) 20 points in a single cycle, for me to come into the legislature. I came into the legislative minority. Republicans that held the state Senate since 1984 – my entire lifetime – and instead of accepting that we were powerless, voters across Michigan created the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission and then we have this opportunity in front of us in 2022 to flip control of the Senate for the first time in my lifetime. I opened a PAC. I raised millions of dollars. I supported a dozen other candidates for state Senate financially. I brought my volunteers all across the state and helped flip control of the chamber that I serve in. Then we took a Democratic trifecta and we delivered on so many issues for people whether it’s child care, access to clean water, economic opportunity, strengthening unions and labor, expanding housing. I could go on and on about what we did,” said McMorrow. “So when Gary Peters announced that he would not seek reelection, I started calling a lot of the people that I had built up relationships (with) over the last few cycles throughout my PAC work to ask, ‘What are you looking for? What do we need in our senate nominee on the Democratic side?’ I heard loud and clear, ‘We need to fight, we need somebody with a backbone,’ and I really want to take exactly what we did for the State Senate to the federal level into Washington and show the rest of the country how we can fight like Michigan.”

When it comes to a campaign strategy over the next year, McMorrow says that she plans to continue meeting people where they’re at and that her training as an industrial designer has taught her how to come up with solutions, garner feedback and make edits as necessary. She also explained how a lot of people may not be interested in coming to a politically-centered event, such as a town hall or candidate forum, and that events like her state brewery tour will help make her much more accessible to people who wouldn’t usually attend events to talk to candidates.

“It’s all about listening. The most important thing that our next senator can do is meet people, hear what people’s concerns are and put forward a plan to solve people’s needs. I am an industrial designer by background. That’s what I went to college for, and I bring a lot of that approach into my style of politics. So it is about number one: identifying what the issues are. Number two: when we’re designing a product, you come up with a thousand different ideas and you test them and you focus group them and you get feedback and you build prototypes. You put them out, you put things on the market. If they don’t work, you’re willing to try again, and I think that is desperately missing in our politics. We are running a campaign like it is election year already. We are doing countless events across the state. I’ll be on a statewide brewery tour where we are getting out and meeting people just in community. I think there are a lot of people who will never come to a town hall or a candidate forum, not because they don’t care, but because it’s intimidating. It’s not something that most people do unless you’re already really plugged into politics,” explained McMorrow. “I really want to meet everybody who has checked out or who isn’t kind of that hyper political percent, so we are going into breweries. We’re not closing them down. There are people who are just out to have a beer who have no idea that we’re coming. We are not pre-vetting any of these attendees. They’re open to the public. It’s not a fundraiser, and we’re not pre-vetting any of the questions. There’s nothing that’s off limits, and that can lead to some really tense conversations. It can lead to a lot of back and forth…that is a lot of how we’re campaigning and that’s exactly what I did in 2018. There were a lot of people who I’ve never met because I’ve never (ran) for office before, and what I found in my first campaign was a lot of voters said, ‘You remind me a lot of my daughter who left Michigan. Why are you here and what can we do to bring my kids back?’ That became the umbrella for everything that was on my policy agenda and that’s my same approach here. It is a big state. We are 10 million people across two peninsulas. I(‘ve got to) go meet as many people as possible here where the concerns are and then put together an agenda that is responsive to people’s needs.”

If elected to serve in the U.S. Senate, one of McMorrow’s main priorities will be to be accessible to her constituents as an elected official. She shared that her experiences speaking with constituents, particularly the younger generation, have revealed a distrust of politicians and the political system. As she continues to campaign and if she is elected, she will work to keep those lines of communication open so people don’t see her as an inaccessible public figure.

“I think (what’s) more important than anything is we have to build relationships. I believe that a lot of people have just checked out of politics because it feels like this thing that happens with very important people far away from you. I was out in Muskegon and I had a meeting. I was at a Plummer training facility and I had asked to meet with a purchases. I went to meet with some younger people and just have a really open, honest conversation about what they’re thinking right now, and they did not hold back. They pretty much told me, ‘All politicians are corrupt. Everybody goes into politics, regardless of whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, to get rich and serve themselves, and nobody cares about us.’ I don’t blame people for thinking that way, so I think my job as a U.S. Senator is to bring a lot of what’s happening in Washington back to Michigan, so that you don’t feel like you elected somebody and then you never see them again. That means that we have to do things very differently,” McMorrow said. “I’m very active on social media. I started doing a series of ‘Ask Me Anything’ questions right around the election in November of 2024. I just put up a question box that just said ‘Ask Me Anything’ and I had no idea how people would respond. I got hundreds of questions right away, on everything from, ‘What’s the difference between a bill and a resolution?’ to ‘Tell me about the nine bills that passed out of the House that didn’t get sent to the Governor’s desk,’ to ‘What’s your favorite Bluey episode?’ We’re going to use every tool of communication, whether it’s live events or social media or podcasts, YouTube, you name it, to ensure that Michiganders feel like they have a relationship with me and that I’m not some stranger who’s in an ivory tower far away, because that’s why people distrust politics.”

For those who may be unfamiliar with McMorrow, she says that her platform is based on a collaborative approach to policy, because she doesn’t have all of the answers and she is looking to constituents to help inform her about issues she may be unaware of. She shared a personal anecdote about sleeping in her car and having no job prospects following her graduation from college during the 2008 recession, and how she wants to help plan a new vision of the American Dream for people who feel like they’ve “done everything right” but are still struggling.

“I want them to know that this is about listening. I will be the first to say (that) I don’t know what I don’t know, but you do. You live your life every day. You are an expert. You know what you’re going through. I think that really is something that is deeply missing from politics. There’s a lot of people who get into this job, who think they have all the answers and they’re wrong. So (on my website,) we have my policy agenda, but there’s also an open call to you, that if you see something missing or you have an idea, email us and let us know, because it’s something that we are going to build together. I’m sharing a lot about my own personal story on the campaign trail,” shared McMorrow. “I graduated in 2008, right into the recession. I always wanted to be a car designer. Instead of designing cars, I was sleeping in the back of my car. I had no job. I had no job prospects. I had no health insurance. I share that to share that I get that. A lot of people feel like, ‘I’ve done everything right and I’m still getting screwed.’ The thesis, the theory of this campaign is that it is time in this country to write the vision for a new American dream, which acknowledges it’s not just anti-Donald Trump, right? Donald Trump was the symptom, not the cause, because there are a lot of people for many years who have done everything right and can’t get ahead. (They) can’t afford a house, can’t afford to start a family and are not saving for retirement. That is what this campaign is all about.”

More information about Mallory’s U.S. senatorial campaign can be found on her website at www.mcmorrowformichigan.com. Information about her current time in the State Senate can be found on her specific website at senatedems.com/mcmorrow.