Can Politicians Be Truly Authentic? ft. Sen. Mallory McMorrow
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Today, we're going to share my interview with Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow, which happened last week at the DNC. You may remember Mallory McMorrow as the first person to bring out the giant Project 2025 book at the DNC. And we did talk about that, but I was also really excited to talk to her about how she got her start in the Michigan State Senate and any advice she has for people who are looking to get involved.

We also talked about that famous speech he made on the Michigan Senate floor in 2022 that went viral and made her a national name. Let's play a clip of it. Thank you, Mr. President. I didn't expect to wake up yesterday to the news that the senator from the 22nd district had overnight accused me by name of grooming and sexualizing children in an email fundraising for herself. So I sat on it for a while wondering why me.

And then I realized, because I am the biggest threat to your hollow, hateful scheme, because you can't claim that you are targeting marginalized kids in the name of "parental rights" if another parent is standing up to say no.

So then what? Then you dehumanize and marginalize me. You say that I'm one of them. You say she's a groomer, she supports pedophilia, she wants children to believe that they were responsible for slavery and to feel bad about themselves because they're white. Well, here's a little bit of background about who I really am.

Growing up, my family was very active in our church. I sang in the choir. My mom taught CCD. One day, our priest called a meeting with my mom and told her that she was not living up to the church's expectations and that she was disappointing.

My mom asked why. Among other reasons, she was told it was because she was divorced and because the priest didn't see her at mass every Sunday. So where was my mom on Sundays? She was at the soup kitchen with me. I love that speech and how she stood up for herself. So with that, let's get into our conversation from the DNC and we'll talk more about it. Michigan, what's up? Go Michigan. Go Michigan.

Let's get right into it. Senator McMorrow, you made an epic appearance on the DNC stage last the other night. Are your arms still sore? They are. So if anybody saw my appearance Monday night, it's become a recurring theme. So I introduced Project 2025 here at the convention. Kenan Thompson picked it up last night. The book, I described it to somebody today as...

the country's worst Olympic torch that we just keep passing on. But it is heavy. It weighs about as much as my daughter and she is three and a half. Wow. Well, that's adorable. Is that book real or is it just like a prop book? I have to know. It is. It is. So we had worked it into the script with the speechwriter and I were going back and forth and I was imagining a normal sized book.

I had never spoken to an arena before. So huge credit to the DNC team who built a much larger version of Project 2025. But it is they painstakingly recreated every page.

Wow. It is all 923 pages of Project 2025. They have really not let a single detail go unaddressed. So you are quite a rising star by all accounts in the Democratic Party. And I remember, yes.

I remember exactly when I first saw you, you had this very impassioned speech on the floor of the Senate in Michigan. And you were leaning into an idea that I think as white women, we can probably relate to, which is that there is this coverage, but also it's an odd position to be in as a progressive because you're

People expect you to come from a certain place, but you were saying basically that as a Christian woman, you have all this privilege and that you...

just want to live a normal life. And I feel like what you had said was sort of the beginning of people actually speaking like plain English to get these progressive points across. So can you talk a little bit about why do you think that moment went viral and why, if those things are sort of being said all the time, why is it that that is not more prominent? Oh my goodness. So yeah, to, to

Set the stage for anybody who may not have seen it. Back in 2022, I woke up one morning to the news of a fundraising email from a Republican colleague of mine fundraising for herself. And she accused me by name of wanting to groom and sexualize kindergartners and wanting eight-year-olds to believe that they were responsible for slavery. Just about the worst of our Trumpian hellscape that we live in in terms of political attacks.

And I was in a place, I was serving in my first term. I flipped a Republican district when I first ran for office. After training with Emerge, I'm an Emerge alum.

And I had been ostracized. So over four years, I introduced 49 bills. I didn't pass a single one. Not only did I not pass any legislation, I never even got a hearing. So I was in this place when this attack happened that was already pretty dark. I felt like I had let everybody down who had supported me and donated to me and knocked doors with me. And I had been redistricted into a primary with a Democratic colleague. So given all of that...

I had sort of decided I wasn't going to run for reelection. So that was my mentality when this happened. And I something about that. I decided if I'm going to go down, I might as well go down swinging. I realized this might be the last speech I ever give on this floor. So why not just go for it? This was in the middle of the rise of groups like Moms for Liberty that were taking over school boards and banning books and

going after so-called critical race theory and now diversity, equity, and inclusion officers. And I had gotten a phone call, a long conversation I had with one woman in a more conservative area of my district...

who told me she had joined one of these parents groups. She was frustrated with her school's administration, but she said, I'm not this person. I don't want to attack a kid because they're gay. I don't want to tamp down on our ability to learn accurate history and promote diversity. She said, but I don't know where to go.

And I thought about that a lot. So, you know, I am, and I said repeatedly throughout the speech, a straight white Christian married suburban mom who knows that hate will only win when people like me stand by and let it happen. And it was very intentional to speak to people who are like me, to say it's on us. Because I think, to your point, as white women...

particularly white women who have privilege or are upper middle class. It can be scary to step into a space that we know we need to step into, not make it about us. And I think too often, maybe not even maliciously, out of the fear of saying the wrong thing, white women are doing nothing.

And that was unacceptable. And that speech was posted online. Uh, within a few hours, Hillary Clinton retweeted it. I got a phone call from president Biden. I missed it. It went to voicemail. That was deeply embarrassing. You and Tim walls. I know when I saw that video, I was like, that's deeply relatable. I love you, Tim. Uh,

But yeah, it took off. And I think it really struck a nerve with people. I got letters and phone calls and emails. I still do to this day from people all around the country who said that is who I am and what has been missing.

Yeah, I mean, it almost felt like you were like the pre-Tim Walls in the way you were putting it so plainly and so putting it out there in a way that you're right. I think people don't have the candidness that's necessary. But I also feel that this is going to change. I think that there has been sort of, we've turned a corner on the type of language that we're using and language

the pride that we have in putting forth progressive ideals. Like, you know, I'm not a monster because I want to give kids school lunch. So how do you, you know, when you mentor younger candidates or peers or maybe even not younger, how are you sort of encouraging them to put that voice out there, to find the confidence and the knowledge to be able to speak in such a way?

Yeah. So a very strange thing happened in the wake of that speech. It was covered all over the place. James Carville called it the blueprint for Democrats and how to fight back. That was exactly what I thought at the time, too. But when it happened, when I heard that specifically, I worried that my speech would become a mad lip and people would start to look at, OK, I have to do exactly what she did, because I think as Democrats, when we see a thing work, we think we have to do the exact same thing.

And my colleague, Jim Ananick, he used to be the Senate Democratic leader, an incredible senator from Flint who supported me to help me get into office. He's also much more heavyset than I am. He's got a beard. And he said, you know, Mel, I went to an event in my district and I stood up and said, I'm a straight white Christian married suburban mom. And it didn't work, which was pretty funny. And.

But what I tell people all the time, I have been tapped now sort of as a communications, I don't know, guru. People invite me to give talks about how do we message. And I always say, talk about anything. Like you would talk to your friend at a bar.

Which, when you think about kind of that framing, it puts you in the mindset of, I want to be excited about this story that I'm telling my friend. I want to use regular language like I'm going to use between friends. And it's going to be relatable and it's going to be short because you want to do it between drinks.

So I think when you think about it that way, it can look many different ways, but it's going to be authenticity, I think, is a word that's overused, but it's authentic. It's true to who you are. It's short. It's catchy. And for Democrats, I think for too long, people have accused us of being elitist and out of touch. If you talk like a normal person, suddenly you're talking with people and not at them.

Absolutely. You know, it's interesting that you say that because when we founded Betches and then later Betches News, that was the entire premise of it. It was that you are there is a place to talk about politics and political issues online, but you have to talk about them the way you would talk about pop culture or a movie or Bravo.

And it is really, I think, going to be the future. Is there a particular issue or message that you think is going to be kind of that next frontier? Oh, my goodness. For me, it's child care. This is such a huge gap that we have in this country. The fact that I gave birth in 2021. So in the middle of the pandemic, I wasn't sure.

When we would come out of the pandemic, so I didn't apply for child care centers, I was on like 26 different wait lists. And I recognize that even with the resources that we have, if it's this hard for me, it is impossible for anybody else. I talked to a woman in my neighborhood as I was walking my daughter in her stroller who said she was on 47 different wait lists.

for her two sons, all of which had a deposit that was non-refundable. So she had spent hundreds, if not thousands of dollars just to find a childcare center. And she eventually gave up and said, it would have cost my entire salary just to have childcare for my two young sons. So I left the workforce until they were old enough to go to kindergarten. And I think that we now have in Kamala Harris, she has put this at the forefront of

It has been disgusting to see the Republicans attack people like Kamala, people like Pete Buttigieg as not parents, as if there's only one way that's acceptable to be a parent. But I think this is going to be it. We should talk to women have a loud voice in a platform now in a way that we haven't. We can talk to each other about this and make the case that if we do not close this gap, it hurts our economy.

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You obviously encourage young women, young people to run for office, but not everyone is really cut out for running for office. And I think that people, like you said, you know, if they don't know exactly what to say or exactly what to do, they're sort of like fumbling around a little. And, you know, you join a call or you, you know, get connected, but it

that road of engagement is not steep enough to make a difference quickly. So what are, are there other things that you encourage people to do or change or look at their civic engagement and their civic life?

that do not involve running for office? Oh my goodness, of course. So many things. This could be an entire other conversation in itself, but something that we saw in Michigan. In the wake of the election of Donald Trump in 2016, there were all of these organizations like Emerge and many others that specialized in recruiting and training candidates. But what we found in that cycle was we didn't have any staff.

We didn't have anybody who knew how to run campaigns or had done this before. So my first campaign, it was an all-woman campaign team. None of us had any done it before. And we figured it out as we went along. So I think if you aren't the person who wants to go out and shake hands and meet people and give speeches and have conversations, if you're not going to be kind of the spokesperson for

of the effort, be on the team. We need great people, my chief of staff and political directors in the front row, Emily, who makes everything happen

There's so much effort in American politics. We almost celebritize it in a way that I think is very unhealthy without recognizing it takes an entire team in every single office at every level to successfully not only run and win, but to pass legislation to actually deliver on the things that we believe on. So whatever your skill set is, there is a place for that.

in a campaign or in an office or just engaging in your community, network your community. Something I said on the White Women for Kamala call was the most influence you can have is right at home. We have made these social media bubbles where we talk to only people that we agree in, but how many people know every single person who lives within three blocks of them? Honestly, do you know every single person in that circle in your neighborhood? Probably not.

The most influential thing you can do is network that little bubble and then talk to them about issues because they're going to show up for neighborhood issues. But then when it comes time to vote, think about how many people are right there that you can help turn out that are going to believe you and trust you because you're their neighbor, not somebody calling them from another state.

Yeah, I've said, I've been saying a lot this election cycle is that if you have like one cool high school senior who is canvassing for Kamala Harris or a local candidate, for example, that will drive so many more people to the polls than maybe the entire brat meme. Because the brat meme is about getting the conversation and creating a permission structure for people to care about this and to post about it. But we also have to like go out on election day or...

Get a mail-in ballot. And I'll admit, I have had cycles in my life where I have just, like, shit. I didn't make it. Or, you know, primaries that I was like, wait, that was today. And I'm a pretty engaged voter. And so people who are non-engaged voters, the fact of whether they'll vote that day is really like, did they run late for an appointment? Were their kids, you know, were their kids sick? And all of that makes a difference.

One thing I want to ask about is sort of this double bind. And we've been noticing it with, I think, a lot of the way people are talking about the vice president's platform for her campaign. And, you know, I see a lot of headlines that are like, this convention's all vibes. There hasn't been any substantive policy.

But then you think back on like Elizabeth Warren who came with 300 plans and Hillary Clinton who had like white papers coming out of her head, like just coming out of everywhere. And no one cared. Like no one was being like, oh, look at these competent women who have, they've thought through every single thing. It's like, actually, no, she's a scoldy librarian. Right. So how do women get, and you know, this again goes back to the way you were speaking about things and the way you're able to tap into that

that white women aspiration. How do you kind of advise women navigate that double bind of needing substance but they don't like your substance and you have to look a certain way but you can't scare anyone. I mean there was so much imposter syndrome. I remember when I even thought about running for office or getting into this work, I didn't think I was remotely qualified to run for office.

I used to be a car designer. I was a Hot Wheels designer. I worked in media. Nothing in my career was politics. And I thought, OK, I know I need to do this. Something is calling me to do this, but I'm going to volunteer on a campaign. Maybe I'll start at entry level because as women, I think we have that imposter syndrome. If I don't know as much as the person at the top, I'm not qualified and I have to start at the bottom.

And through Emerge, one of our teachers, a trainee who was an elected official in Michigan who I had deep respect for, came in. We had gotten to know each other. She knew my career background. And she finally pulled me aside and said, Mallory, men never do this. They never second guess themselves. They just go for it. Donald Trump ran for president and won.

With no qualifications to do that. So she said, look at your skill set, your career, your background, and just run for the office you want to run for. So I put my name on a ballot. I challenged the Republican incumbent in a Republican district in Michigan. They laughed me off the entire time, but jokes on him because we rallied more than 500 volunteers.

over a year and a half. Many women, retired teachers, young people, kids who couldn't vote yet but recognize the importance of gun violence prevention and reproductive rights. All of these things, we brought them all together and we kicked his ass.

We swung that district. He had won this district previously by 16 points. I won by four. That's a 20 point swing that all of us were able to do together. And I think that it is about showing who you are as a person and how you lead. I was an Elizabeth Warren supporter. I loved all the plans. Exactly. Hello. We got Elizabeth Warren. I'm still dreaming big and fighting hard every single day. I love it.

We can be competent, but we also have to show people who we are as leaders and maybe not necessarily always buried in the plans because the reality is when you get elected, you cannot deliver everything on your own. You have to work. If Kamala Harris becomes president, she cannot unilaterally deliver on all the things we want her to do. She needs to work with Congress. She needs to work with the U.S. Senate. She needs to work with state governments in every state in the country. So I think that the knock that maybe there aren't enough plans...

is bullshit because she's showing us, I mean, look at this campaign that she's been able to put together in just weeks. That to me is an indication of leadership where all of us, I mean, look at all these Zoom calls that were formed. It started with a win with black women. Then it was black men. Then it was white women for Kamala. Then it was white dudes for Kamala. I saw one, my husband is Jewish and he just aspires to be Doug Emhoff. That's what he wants to be when he grows up. And there was one I saw circulating that was like,

Jewish dads for powerful women who want to live in a house with a bowling alley and maybe we'll have a Zoom call if it's convenient. And I just loved it. And she's given permission for everybody to be themselves but join a team. And to me...

That is a hell of an indication of the type of leader she's going to be more than any amount, you know, certainly more than a 923 page project 2025 policy document, which should go on a shelf and never come back.

Yeah, like a DNC Hall of Fame, particularly that large one. So just the last question, going back to something you said before, which I did not know about, you know, your original breakout moment, which is that you were leaving it all in the field. And I think there is something very freeing when it's like, I don't give a fuck what these people think anymore. And like, it's, yeah, look, lots of applause for not giving a fuck what these people think anymore. Yeah.

And as I'm getting applause for this, I'm going to try to store this as a core memory next time I'm feeling some self-doubt. But how can we tap into that on even when we're not leaving it all in the fields, even when the stakes feel really high and we're not like, you know, making our last stand? How can we tap into that freedom that we could feel if we worked?

I think what I took out of the experience, because again, I didn't go into it planning for the reaction that I had to this speech that I think really drew me back into this work in a way that I wasn't anticipating. But what it said to me is forget all the bullshit. You know, I was so caught up in, I had blinders on to, oh no, I haven't passed any bills and all of these people are disappointed in me and they wasted all of these hours. I was so in my head.

And the reality was the people who supported me and love me and who I represent in my district didn't care. Like we have a lot of new legislators in Michigan who are so concerned about getting a PA. That's a public act. That is when your bill passes into law. They want their name on it. Nobody gives a shit.

They don't know. They don't know what bills are. They don't know who wrote them. But if you present yourself, and that was a really good reminder for me that as long as my values and my reason for doing this, as long as I'm checked into that, it doesn't matter.

They're just numbers that are arbitrary and don't mean anything. Right. I definitely think there's something to leaning into your purity of your intentions and why you're doing it that is not as focused on, you know, getting your name, you know, getting another line on the resume to impress people and for your next campaign. There was something, a video I watched of Adele.

A few months ago where she was accepting an award and she said something that I thought was so beautiful. She was talking about her first album came out when she was 21 and then she had a kid and there was all this pressure on her to constantly stay in the spotlight.

And she accepted this award and she said, you know, I reject the premise that to be successful, you have to constantly be relevant. Let's give ourselves freedom, especially as women, to take a step back and to be moms and to be family members and to have friends and give ourselves grace and space and trust that when we're ready to step back in.

People will be there for us. I say that all the time. A tree doesn't bloom in every season. Right. And we have to grow. That's right. And blossom at some times. So we'll leave you with that. Thank you so much, Senator McMurray. You are a star and I am very excited to see where the future takes you. Thanks, everybody. Thank you for coming. Go Michigan. Happy convention. Go Michigan. American Fever Dream is produced and edited by Samantha Gatzik. Social media by Candace Meniga and Bridget Schwartz.

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