Democratic Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow’s campaign for an open U.S. Senate seat could face fallout over social media posts she made years ago that resurfaced on Wednesday.
McMorrow is one of three Democratic candidates competing to replace outgoing Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI).
Though she has positioned herself as a centrist as she campaigns against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed, deleted posts among nearly 6,000 tweets highlighted in a CNN investigation show she supported the Black Lives Matter movement, compared President Donald Trump and his supporters to Nazis, and contemplated a future without cars.
The recovered tweets include comments where she said: “I’m particularly proud of my alma mater #NotreDame for offering a White Privilege seminar,“ and “Cars are dead.”
McMorrow has mostly positioned herself as the centrist alternative to El-Sayed. Though she believes Immigration and Customs Enforcement must be “vastly reformed,” she does not believe it should be abolished, in contrast to El-Sayed’s position of complete elimination. McMorrow has been less critical of wealthy individuals than El-Sayed, who told WDET he doesn’t “think that our system should be in the business of creating billionaires.” And while El-Sayed long supported fully eliminating and replacing private insurance with Medicare before shifting his position during the campaign, McMorrow backs a “public option” for health plans, which would be a government-run insurance plan that could be offered as an option on the current healthcare market.
“This is the campaign for everybody,” she said in early April, describing herself as a “pragmatic” when asked if she identified as a progressive.
However, she recently declined to say she believes streamer Hasan Piker is antisemitic. Piker’s involvement in campaigning for El-Sayed in the race has sparked controversy, due to his history of comments, such as he “would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time,” which he said earlier this month. In addition, she has veered to the left on the Supreme Court, suggesting she backs adding more justices amid pushback against the court’s conservative-leaning members.
That could trigger concerns that McMorrow is campaigning as a centrist, but will govern as a progressive Democrat, similar to accusations Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) has faced.
In addition, McMorrow’s now-deleted posts about her past affiliation with California could face scrutiny. McMorrow wrote in her 2025 autobiography that she “relocated permanently” from California to Michigan in 2014. But she repeatedly referenced voting in California’s June 2016 Democratic primary and described herself in July 2016 as a constituent of California, according to the investigation.
“I had a dream that the U.S. amicably broke off into The Ring (coasts + Can + Mex + parts Mich/Tex) and Middle America,” she wrote in December 2016, marking her anger that Trump had won the presidential election.
She also tweeted: “There are days like these that make me miss California even more.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to McMorrow’s campaign for comment.
McMorrow’s spokeswoman told CNN that the lawmaker’s move from California to Michigan “was a process” that was not complete until mid-2016, that she remained registered to vote in California during that time, and that she voted absentee in June 2016. Spokeswoman Hannah Lindow said McMorrow considers 2014 the start of that move.
“These are normal tweets by a normal person,” she said. “As Michigan’s Senate majority whip, Mallory has spent the past eight years fighting and delivering to make people’s lives better: higher wages, universal pre-K, no kid going hungry in schools, comprehensive gun violence prevention laws, and more. And she’s tweeted about that too.”
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McMorrow was first elected in 2018, flipping her district from red to blue after issuing an olive branch to voters across the aisle.
Emerson College’s most recent polling in the race shows McMorrow and El-Sayed in a dead heat ahead of the August primary.
On the Republican side, the GOP has mostly consolidated behind former Rep. Mike Rogers, as he seeks to flip the seat red for a second time following his narrow Senate loss in the 2024 cycle.