State Sen. Mallory McMorrow hopes to go from the State Senate to the U.S. Senate.
On Wednesday (April 2), she announced that she was running for the open U.S. Senate seat.
“This was always on my mind. But I don’t think that many people anticipated Senator Peters’ announcement when it happened,” McMorrow said.
U.S. Sen. Gary Peters announced in January that he wouldn’t seek another term.
“I knew that we had to start exploring very quickly. This is not a decision that I take lightly. The most important thing to me is that Democrats hold onto the seat in Michigan,” she said.
McMorrow stated that she plans to lay out a vision of The New American Dream to counter President Donald Trump’s slogan of Make America Great Again.
“This is going to be about ensuring you can afford to buy a house in the community where you want to live, that you can afford to send your kids to a great school, and that there are great parks.
I would be one of very few young parents in the U.S. Senate. So, I am thinking about universal paid leave, childcare, and safety for folks, ensuring that you have safe communities, your fundamental rights are protected, and that Michiganders won’t have to worry about the negative impacts of gun violence, which has been a significant issue for me during my time in the Legislature.”
State Sen. Mallory McMorrow
McMorrow represents Michigan’s 8th Senate District, which includes parts of Royal Oak, Clawson, and Detroit. She has served in the state Senate for six years and is currently the Senate Majority Whip.
In April 2022, she went viral in a floor speech responding to a fundraising email by Republican state Senator Lana Theis of Brighton, suggesting McMorrow wanted to “groom and sexualize kindergartners.”
In her floor speech, she said, “So I sat on it for a while wondering why me. And then I realized that I am the biggest threat to your hollow, hateful scheme.”
McMorrow expressed that she was hurt by Theis’ comments.
“This was a mother accusing another mother of that really horrific thing. But I also recognized in that moment that as horrible as I felt, I was fine.
This was a political attack where there are people who feel this pressure every single day, and I felt like it was my responsibility to stand up for them and to counter these attacks, turning the attention back onto the issues that really matter for people, which are not attacks like this.”
State Sen. Mallory McMorrow
She noted that politicians continue to use divisive tactics.
“It is really easy to lead by fear. It is much harder to lead by hope and by policies that actually uplift everybody without trying to harm the most marginalized among us,” McMorrow said.
Following last year’s election, McMorrow hasn’t shied away from critiquing her own party.
“It’s not enough to be against Donald Trump. I think we should rightfully call out all of the chaos that he is unleashing on our country right now, all of the unrest that people feel. But we also have to talk about what’s next,” she said.
Local 4 reached out to the Michigan Republican Party for a response to McMorrow’s candidacy and is awaiting a response.
Watch the full announcement below:
