Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow is running for U.S. Senate, joining the competitive race against other big, established Democrat names. So, what make Senator McMorrow different from the other candidates, and why is she running?
In their latest chat, Senator McMorrow and Jen discuss what is needed most for Michiganders and the Democratic Party at large. Most notably, Sen. McMorrow argues for traditional “norms” to evolve into enforceable laws. “If the Trump presidency has taught us anything, it’s that norms are not laws.” she explains, “and we’ve had this expectation for way too long that presidents and elected officials of both parties will adhere to the norms.”
The pair also consider the growing concern over lacking regulations on cryptocurrency, the affordability crisis, and Trump’s incredibly poor handling of foreign affairs.
If you’re interested in learning more about Senator McMorrow’s campaign, click here.
Mallory McMorrow serves as the Michigan State Senator of the 8th Senate District, which includes Northwest Detroit and 10 municipalities in Oakland County. First elected in 2018, Senator McMorrow has established herself as a dedicated public servant committed to practical solutions that improve the lives of Michigan residents. She currently serves as Senate Majority Whip, the first woman in state history to hold this position, and as Chair of the Economic Community Development Committee and Vice Chair of the Oversight Committee.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, editor-in-Chief of the Contrarian. We’re delighted to have back with us Mallory McMorrow, who is, of course, running for Senate from Michigan, and is in the State Senate. Welcome, Mallory, good to see you again.
Mallory McMorrow
Good to see you, Jen.
Jen Rubin
The Senate had a collapse, shall we put it kindly, at the end of the shutdown. And there’s a lot of talk that the current leadership of the Senate is not what it should be. If you win your race, and go on to become a United States Senator, will you be looking for new leadership in the Senate?
Mallory McMorrow
I will be. And, you know, I believe that in this moment, we have to bring the general public along with us. For weeks, Democrats had coalesced around a singular issue, and that was ACA subsidies, and said, in many, frankly, very effective ways, this is our red line. To quote, Senator Schumer, there’s no effing way that we’re gonna cave on not voting to extend ACA subsidies. And then this deal was put on the table on a Sunday afternoon, and by Sunday night, it was passed, with not only no extension of ACA subsidies, but for the promise of a vote in December.
And I don’t want to minimize the negative impacts of the shutdown. I was actually in an Uber here in Michigan. leading up to the end of the shutdown, and I started talking to the driver, and asked, how long have you been driving? He said, I just started doing this. And I said, oh, what else were you doing? What are you doing? And he told me, I’m an air traffic controller. So, I don’t want to minimize. 40 days in, the people responsible for making sure the planes don’t crash into each other are taking on second jobs to pay their bills.
But, if you’re telling Americans, this is our red line, you gotta communicate constantly about what’s happening and what are you trying. So, you know, as I’m thinking about how you leverage digital media, social media, calls to action. If it were me. I would have put out a call to action on Sunday afternoon to tell Michiganders, this is the deal that’s on the table. It does not include an extension of ACA subsidies. Here are the phone numbers, here’s who to call, here’s who to email, here’s what to say, and you build up a pressure campaign for maybe even just the next 24 hours. Get into Monday, where you’re back into the weekday, and you’re back into a news cycle, and you could have tried to extract just a little bit more out of that negotiation, but bring people along with you so they see that you’re not just fighting for them, you’re fighting with them.
And I think we need leadership in the Senate who recognizes how to bring the public on board, how to communicate constantly, and that’s what I would be looking for in the Senate.
Jen Rubin
There was also a very corrupt provision in there, and there’s no other way to say it, which allows, certain Republican senators to sue and collect nice paydays, arising out of a completely legitimate investigation after January 6th. It’s unbelievable to me and to many others that that got in there. How do Democrats attack corruption when they allow something like that to go forward?
Mallory McMorrow
I mean, you can’t. You can’t have it both ways, and that’s what I’m hearing no matter where I go across the state. We do up to a dozen events every single week on my campaign, and I’m going into union training facilities, not just to talk to leadership, I’m asking, put me in the room with apprentices. So, it’s mostly guys, younger guys who are just starting out in their careers, maybe they vote inconsistently, maybe they voted for Donald Trump. And what I am hearing loud and clear is there is a perception that both parties are the same, that all of this is corrupt, that it doesn’t matter what the letter is behind your name, that people go into these jobs and go to Washington to become multimillionaires, and they don’t care about the people back at home. how are you gonna change that perception and rebuild trust if you say, we gotta fight corruption, we gotta fight corruption, and oh, by the way, we’re gonna give half a million dollars to these Republicans?
Because, by the way, their cell phone records were subpoenaed legally. You know, there was nothing wrong here. Their cell phone records were achieved through a legal process, and just because they don’t like it, we’re gonna give them half a million dollars. It is exactly why people, guys in these union halls, think, it’s all broken, and why should I buy it?
Jen Rubin
Right. Donald Trump went into office promising he was going to lower prices, and now, he’s suddenly discovered the affordability issue, which is, pretty rich, pardon the pun. you… if you win, you’ll be in the minority, at least, most likely, but possibly in the majority, but Donald Trump will still be in the, presidency. What can you, once you’re elected, actually do on affordability? What are the kinds of things you can put pressure on? And also, talk to us a little bit about housing affordability. I’m hearing from a lot of candidates that that is the issue that comes up again and again. People of your generation don’t think they’re ever going to be able to buy a house.
Mallory McMorrow
I think that’s exactly right, and you hit the nail on the head. You know, I’m somebody who… Graduated college back in 2008, right into the recession. I went to school to become a car designer, and I had a degree in my hand, I had thousands of dollars in student loan debt, I did not have health insurance, because the Affordable Care Act didn’t exist yet, and I was sleeping in the backseat of my car. And I laid out all of my bills one day to the owner of a startup that I was working at, and saying, you gotta pay me at least this much. For me to not be sleeping in your parking lot. And I think that’s exactly right, where for millennials and Gen Z, they look at a system that has failed us for a long time. That Donald Trump didn’t create this crisis, but he’s the result of it.
You have a lot of people who looked at a system under both parties that has created this reality where many of us don’t believe we’ll ever be able to afford to buy a house, or… have access to Social Security, these things that we are paying into that we’re never gonna benefit from, and it’s not surprising you get somebody like Donald Trump, who truly just represents blowing the whole system up. Like, that’s just what it is. What I’m hearing on the ground right now is it’s not just housing affordability, that’s too vague.
I’ll give you one example. I was in one of these apprentice rooms, and Housing came up, and this one young guy said that he had been looking for a house for months and months and months, and it was impossible for him to put a bid on, that he needed an all-cash offer, or by the time he put a bid in on a house, there were a dozen other offers in. he was finally going to buy a house, and the only way he was able to do it is because a friend of his dad’s had a house, and he caught it before it went on the market. So that, to me, as I’m thinking about how we think about introducing policy to address this, there’s a supply issue. We just simply have to build more housing. And I think what I’ve learned from the State Senate, I served 4 years in the minority. We can still introduce legislation, we can talk about it, we can tell people what our plans will be if but for the change in power. That’s how we were able to flip control of the state senate here in Michigan for the first time in 40 years, was we laid out an aggressive agenda on affordability, on repealing the seniors’ pension tax, on expanding access to housing, on creating universal pre-K, which saves families $10,000 to $15,000 a year if you have access to universal pre-K.
So, building on my track record, but what we did was, for four years in the minority, say, we have all these great ideas, and we will enact them if you put us into power. And then that’s incumbent on us, that when you actually get the chance to govern, you better damn well govern, so that you build trust with people.
So that would be my plan in the U.S. Senate, is let’s lay it all out, let’s lay those plans out, and again, bring the public back in. Here’s who to call, here’s who to email. I’m seeing reporting just this morning that Donald Trump is considering an extension of ACA subsidies. Public pressure campaigns work, and when they don’t have alternative plans on the table, if we empower Michiganders and voters to be part of the process with us, they’re gonna see that, oh, we get it, and we’re the ones that are actually fighting alongside them.
Jen Rubin
Right. Right now, as we talked about, the corruption is massive. You have private companies that are paying… we don’t even really know how much to fund a ballroom on the grounds of the White House. You have the crypto, wealth being generated. You have Donald Trump. pardoning a crypto, exec who helped him get rich. Obviously, oversight is way overdue. What are the kinds of things that you can do, and what are the consequences that you can say for people who have engaged in this kind of behavior?
Mallory McMorrow
I mean, there have to be real consequences. If the Trump presidency has taught us anything, it’s that norms are not laws. And we’ve had this expectation for way too long that presidents and elected officials of both parties will adhere to the norms, as the founders intended. But if it’s not actually a law, and it’s not a statute, and there are no consequences. you go up to that line, and then you go past it.
Thinking about crypto is a space where if there is no real regulation. it is going to collapse on itself. I represent part of Detroit right now, and there are a lot of particularly younger Black men who do not trust institutional banks who are investing in crypto. And there have to be real regulations put in place to prevent something like Donald Trump creating a meme coin that he’s selling for billions of dollars, padding his wealth. That actually isn’t worth anything.
And, you know, I was listening to a podcast the other day about these Bitcoin ATMs, and these scams. Seniors are getting texts saying, oh, you gotta go to this ATM, here’s the address, deposit your life savings into it. And I was talking to somebody who works in crypto regulation who said, these Bitcoin ATMs simply should not exist. So, we gotta have people who are not gonna stick their heads in the sand and pretend like this isn’t happening. happening, who recognize that there are people who want to invest and innovate in this space, but we gotta get all the bad actors out, and if you’re gonna take advantage of it just to become independently wealthy, or in Donald Trump’s case, selling access to the White House to foreign governments through these cryptocurrencies.
We need new laws, and we need new regulations, and there have to be real consequences for when you cross a line. And I currently serve as the vice chair of the State Senate Oversight Committee. We gotta go through all of the things that we would consider norms, and start to actually introduce bills to turn them into laws. There’s gonna be a whole, you know, deep dive history lesson on learnings from the Trump administration to ensure it never It happens again.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Let’s turn for a moment to foreign policy, which the Senate is supposed to be involved in. Donald Trump is, it seems, we don’t really know, leading us to some kind of war with Venezuela, without authorization, without debate, without really knowing the identity of these ships that are, that he is blowing up. Put yourself in the United States Senate. What can and should be doing, they be doing, to make sure that we’re not going to war for specious reasons, or for no reason at all, and that, we make sure that the constitutional prerogatives of the House and Senate are respected?
Mallory McMorrow
Yeah, look, I know the sacrifice that it takes to run for office, the amount of time you spend away from your family, the amount of money you raise. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why the Republican majority legislators in the Congress and the Senate would just willingly hand over all of their power to Donald Trump. especially for something that I can’t believe I’m saying this, but agreeing with Marjorie Taylor Greene that nothing about what we’re seeing in Venezuela is America first. You are starting under the guise of we’re preventing drugs from coming into the United States, you are setting up this flotilla, off the shores of Venezuela, and now declaring Maduro. a terrorist, where that… you’re right there to… it really seems like the Trump administration is getting set up to declare war, which is something he cannot do without the Congress, without the Senate.
So, you know, I don’t know how you encourage the Republicans to find a spine, and to find… their own… purpose here, but maybe this is a moment where you see the defections of people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, where the Democrats, even in the minority, can find maybe some of the most die-hard MAGA loyalists and ask them, is this America first? Are you comfortable with this? Because it seems like Donald Trump has drifted very far away from his initial mission. And there’s an opportunity here to work across the aisle in ways that might be pretty unexpected, to bring some Republicans to the table, to take their own power back. From a president who’s gone rogue.
Jen Rubin
Meanwhile, Marco Rubio seems to be not only carrying water, but carrying a piece of paper, from Vladimir Putin to try to force Ukraine to capitulate. Tell us where you come out on Ukraine and what you think the appropriate role for the United States is.
Mallory McMorrow
Look, I just wanted to take a step back and recognize we are in a moment now where the United States is siding with Vladimir Putin and Russia. Meanwhile, the whole of Europe came together this morning to present a counterplan alongside Ukraine, to ensure that there is an outcome that gets to peace, that gets to the end of the war. that also ensures long-term security for a democratic ally, the Ukrainians. That is a stunning change, of course, that I think terrifies me that we’ve lost our standing in the world so much that now the United States is no longer standing with our European allies. We are standing with a dictator, instead.
So, you know. I’m glad to hear that, the Ukrainian president has basically declared the United States’ 28-point plan dead on arrival, and hopefully, Marco Rubio and the Trump administration come to their better senses and rejoin our European allies. in supporting democracy, and not bowing to a dictator and giving Vladimir Putin everything that he wants.
Jen Rubin
Let me ask you a few, questions that, senators don’t… Senate candidates don’t always get, asked. Who’s your favorite senator? Who would you model yourself on?
Mallory McMorrow
I really admire Chris Murphy right now. You know, he’s somebody that… gun violence is a deeply important issue to me, so having seen him in the last term, be the architect of the Safer Communities Act and really move on that issue, was stunning. You know, the first… true gun violence reforms in 30 years on the federal level. But he’s also somebody that’s not so tied to his own, issues that he’s unwilling to evolve. We are now in the second Trump presidency, and we’ve seen him take this very hard pivot to kind of shift the tone and say, you know, democracy is on the line. We are watching authoritarianism creep in here, and trying new things.
You know, I tuned into Instagram once, I was sliding through my phone, and I caught him live on Instagram, just cracking a beer and saying, hey, today was really fucked up. Let’s talk about it. And bringing people into that conversation and trying… Yes. some new tactics to meet this moment, and I think that’s exactly what you need. You know, you want to elect somebody who has values that you share, who focuses on issues that are important to you, but I believe it’s also important that we… we have people who are willing to evolve to meet the moment, that you’re willing to change your approach to a situation if that situation changes, because I will tell you, honestly, I had a constituent of mine come to me once very frustrated, saying it feels like if Democrats and Republicans are sitting down at a table together playing chess, that the Republicans have flipped the table over and set And Democrats are still planning our next move.
So you can’t just operate like this is business as usual, and I really appreciate kind of seeing the evolution of Senator Murphy, recognizing you gotta try some new stuff to meet this moment, hopefully to get back to a place of normalcy, but an acknowledgement that nothing about right now is normal, and… You gotta respond appropriately.
Jen Rubin
Let’s, give you a hypothetical. Last two years of the Trump administration, one of the justices of the Supreme Court retires, and leaves an opening. Are you willing to hold out and say no, just as the Republicans, said no when President, Barack Obama was in the presidency, and hold out and hold the line?
Mallory McMorrow
Yeah, you gotta fight fire with fire these days. You know, I approach this the same way that I’m glad to see other states approaching redistricting. We don’t have to like that norms have been shattered, but we, again, in that ability to evolve, you gotta recognize that we will never have the ability to govern again if we… play by the same rules that Republicans are just ignoring.
Jen Rubin
Very good. So, if you could do one thing for your constituents, in Michigan, in your first year in the Senate, what would you do? What would be the number one issue or the number one problem that you would focus on?
Mallory McMorrow
This is wonky, but regionalizing grants for economic development. I was up north, recently, and hearing some deep frustration from northern Michiganders saying, we see a lot of economic development and projects that come into the southern part of the state, and there’s nothing up here. So, this has been the bulk of my work from my time in the State Senate, is regionalizing our state’s approach to economic development, but we are at the whims of what comes down to us from the federal level. ‘
The CHIPS Act was a perfect example that, you know, this was a large pot of money that every state was competing to receive. And I was part of the legislature that approved $260 million of taxpayer funds to prepare a site in Mundy Township, which is outside of Flint, for a SanDisk facility that was gonna onshore manufacturing. We were competing for a CHIPS Act award. But then the administration turned over, and Donald Trump came to the State of the Union address and said he hates the CHIPS Act and he’s gonna get rid of it. So, SanDisk then pulled out completely, and we’re left holding this large site, and no jobs have come come to that location. I can tell you, people in the greater Flint area were really holding out hope for that.
So that’s what I would want to do in my first year, is start to create new grant programs that are encouraging regionalized economic development, taking, frankly, a little bit more of a hands-off approach, that if you are doing the right things to grow your population, to increase access to housing and transportation, that you can receive grant funding to do what you will to grow your local economy, because that may mean different industries for different parts of the state, and I want to be a part of encouraging that. From the federal level.
Jen Rubin
Last question for you. We’ve seen Donald Trump, and there’s no other word for it, go to war in American cities, deploying National Guard and using the Border Patrol, in really a violent, thuggish manner. If you get to the Senate, are you willing to go back and look at all the funding, look at all the oversight, impose some restraint on them. It seems as though, there are no rules anymore for these people, and innocents are really being, harmed in very fundamental ways.
Mallory McMorrow
Yeah, we have to take a hard look at, not only the funding, but the approval process for the deployment of those funds. Michigan is a border state. You know, a lot of people don’t think of us as a border state because we’re not a southern state, but we have the largest border crossing in the United States between Michigan and Canada. We’ve seen Border Patrol agents in some of our local communities. go rogue. I can tell you, in talking to some families in Southwest Detroit, for example, where there is a significant Hispanic population and a large immigrant population, there are people afraid to go outside. I talked to one family who said they don’t want to send their kids to school, they don’t want to go to the grocery store. You’ve got people just sheltering in place who are legal residents of the United States and of Michigan. That is devastating to our economy, but beyond just the economic impact, there is a culture of fear that’s been created. We are at war with ourself. And that is not… I believe what any voter voted for. They wanted a fixed immigration system. They wanted to strengthen our border. They wanted to make sure we know who’s coming in and who’s going out, and that there is a rational process to achieve citizenship that doesn’t take, you know, 30-plus years to complete. What we’re seeing is not that at all. We’re seeing security theater that is just invading our communities and making us less safe and terrorizing people, who are just trying to do the right thing. So that comes down to funding, that comes down to oversight, that comes down to reviewing all of the statutes on how that funding is allocated and executed so that it’s not abused.
Jen Rubin
So, Mallory, if people are interested in your campaign, they want to learn more about you, they want to volunteer, they maybe want to give you a few dollars, what should they do?
Mallory McMorrow
You can head to McMorrowForMichigan.com. It’s spelled just like tomorrow. We would love to have you on board. This is going to be one of the races we know is the most watched in the entire country, so you’ve got a huge opportunity to join a great team and do some good here in Michigan.
Jen Rubin
Well, it was a pleasure talking to you, Mallory. We’re gonna… needless to say, we’re gonna be following the race here at the Contrarian, and best of luck out on the campaign trail, and Happy Thanksgiving!
Mallory McMorrow
Thanks, Jen. Happy Thanksgiving!
