Mallory McMorrow

Mallory Ann McMorrow (born August 23, 1986) is an American politician who has served in the Michigan Senate since January 2019. She became Senate majority whip on January 1, 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, she represents the 8th district; before that, from 2019 to 2023, she represented the 13th district.

McMorrow ran for the U.S. Senate in the 2026 election's Democratic primary to succeed incumbent Gary Peters. She suspended her campaign on July 5, 2026, without immediately endorsing either of her two remaining opponents, while saying that the eventual Democratic nominee would have her support. After Abdul El-Sayed won the primary, McMorrow endorsed him and called for Democrats to unite behind his candidacy.

Early life and education Mallory McMorrow was born on August 23, 1986, in Morristown, New Jersey, and grew up in the Whitehouse section of Readington Township, New Jersey. She graduated from Hunterdon Central Regional High School in 2004. She was raised Roman Catholic and her family was active in their local parish; McMorrow has described her upbringing as Irish Catholic. She sang in the church choir, and her mother taught Confraternity of Christian Doctrine classes. McMorrow later said that after her parents divorced, she and her mother began spending Sundays volunteering at soup kitchens outside their diocese. The competition drew more than 400 entries and included public voting; Mazda built a full-size prototype of her design for display at the 2007 Los Angeles Auto Show. After graduation, McMorrow worked for design firms in New York and Los Angeles, as well as for Mattel and Gawker, before moving to Michigan. The victory flipped a seat that had been held by Republicans.

Michigan State Senate In January 2020, McMorrow, lobbyist Melissa Osborn and Michigan Advance reporter Allison Donahue accused Republican state Senator Peter Lucido of sexual harassment. McMorrow stated that Lucido touched her lower back and upper buttocks in November 2018, shortly after she was elected to the state senate, and made comments during a training session that suggested she won her election because of her appearance.

In April 2022, Republican State Senator Lana Theis claimed in a campaign fundraising email that McMorrow wanted to "groom and sexualize kindergartners" and teach that "8-year-olds are responsible for slavery". McMorrow defended herself on April 19, 2022, on the senate floor. The speech brought McMorrow national attention and was followed by television appearances and increased fundraising for Michigan Democratic legislative candidates.

During redistricting following the 2020 United States census, prior to the 2022 elections, Michigan's independent redistricting commission merged McMorrow's district with the district represented by fellow Democrat Marshall Bullock. In the primary election held August 2, 2022, McMorrow defeated Bullock for the Democratic Party's nomination for the 8th District, receiving 32,738 votes to Bullock's 15,093. Since 2023, McMorrow has been the State Senate's Democratic caucus whip.

On August 19, 2024, McMorrow delivered a speech at the Democratic National Convention and brought out a giant copy of the roughly 900-page Project 2025. Democrats had made the Heritage Foundation-led policy project a recurring line of attack against Donald Trump during the campaign, while Trump said the project was not connected to his campaign.

While expressing respect for Democratic Party leaders, McMorrow privately wrote to Joe Biden in July 2024 urging him to step down from the ticket and expressed the need for new leadership in the party in March 2025.

2026 U.S. Senate campaign In April 2025, McMorrow announced that she would run in the Democratic primary to replace United States Senator Gary Peters, who had announced he would not stand for re-election in 2026.

During her campaign, McMorrow was endorsed by U.S. senators Peter Welch, Martin Heinrich, Chris Murphy, and Warren. She suspended her campaign on July 5, 2026. McMorrow did not endorse Abdul El-Sayed or Haley Stevens at the time, but said the Democratic nominee "will have my full support" in the general election. In April 2026, CNN reported that, prior to 2020, McMorrow had expressed progressive views, including support for Black Lives Matter and criticism of Donald Trump and his supporters, in since-deleted social media posts.

Abortion In July 2022, a month after the U.S. Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, McMorrow spoke about an emergency dilation and curettage (D&C) she had undergone that January to remove a malfunctioning IUD. She said the procedure had been medically necessary and expressed concern that restrictions on D&C and other procedures after the reversal of Roe could make similar care harder to obtain. McMorrow said she had been warned that without the procedure she risked infection, permanent reproductive harm, or death. Under the resulting law, qualifying developers may receive the exemptions through at least 2050 if they meet investment, employment and other requirements; the law also included provisions intended to prevent residential utility customers from subsidizing data-center electricity costs. In 2026, she continued to support data-center development but proposed stronger requirements for developers to pay infrastructure and power costs, disclose water and energy usage, meet labor and renewable-energy standards, and "pay their fair share" in taxes.

Economic policy As chairwoman of the Senate Economic and Community Development Committee, McMorrow pushed for more community investments in regional transit and childcare to supplement the state's reliance on providing incentives for large companies for economic development. In April 2025, McMorrow reached out to pro-Israel Democratic groups to emphasize her support for Israel during her candidacy for the 2026 United States Senate election in Michigan and condemned alleged harassment and antisemitism directed at University of Michigan regents during pro-Palestinian protests. According to Jewish Insider, by April 2025, McMorrow had returned foreign-policy questionnaires to at least one pro-Israel Democratic group, emphasizing her commitment to Israel's security. McMorrow asked AIPAC not to intervene in the 2026 U.S. Senate Democratic primary in Michigan on behalf of Haley Stevens and said that she had been in contact with AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups. She was endorsed by J Street in March 2026.

When initially asked about the role of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in the Senate election, she responded that "two things can be true simultaneously ... that Hamas started a violent war, and that war needs to end." McMorrow expressed support for a two-state solution, for the return of hostages, and for providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, saying that peace had been a hallmark of Democratic foreign policy for decades. In April 2025, McMorrow declined to say whether she would vote for additional security aid for Israel without conditions, saying she wanted to see the legislation first. The Israeli government rejected the commission's conclusion. McMorrow later criticized the focus on the legal label as a political "purity test" while continuing to say that the United States should remain an ally of Israel.

Outreach to voters In 2025, McMorrow proposed a voter outreach strategy of "being unafraid of going everywhere and meeting people where they are", citing unwillingness to engage with figures such as Joe Rogan as contributing to a perception that Democrats are "elitist" and "academic". The dispute became one of the sharper intraparty contrasts of the primary campaign.

Political funding In a 2017 interview with Bustle, McMorrow said of accepting corporate political action committee (PAC) money, "We'll never even win elections to get more seats at the table if we don't take advantage of every opportunity out there. Right now, money wins elections." In a since-deleted 2017 tweet, she said, "If we on the left continue to tear down candidates for taking money to win, we'll continue to lose."

McMorrow rejected corporate PAC money for her 2026 Senate campaign. As outside groups entered the race for all three major Democratic candidates, Yes MI Action Committee reserved millions of dollars in advertising supporting McMorrow; public-media reporting identified the group as a third-party advertiser supporting her, and later advertising data placed its spending at about $7 million.

Technology McMorrow supports policies that would impose legal liability on platforms hosting chatbots for recommending or facilitating harmful material involving suicide, eating disorders, or substance abuse. She has also advocated for a nationwide ban on cellphone use in classrooms, default privacy settings for minors on social-media platforms, restrictions on certain addictive platform features for younger users, and expansion of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Their daughter was born in 2021, and the family lives in Royal Oak, Michigan.

In her 2025 book, McMorrow wrote that she "relocated permanently" from California to Michigan in 2014. In April 2026, CNN reported on deleted social-media posts from July 2016 in which McMorrow described herself as a California resident.