Can Voters Get Over McMorrow’s Disdain for Our State?
The coastal carpetbagger's tweets show she was dunking on our weather after moving from her home in California
Mallory McMorrow is a walking red flag. The story of how she arrived in Michigan and became a politician here never quite added up.
McMorrow’s memoir—and who doesn’t write a memoir after winning two state senate races in Michigan?—is called “Hate Won’t Win.” And where the Michigan 2026 Senate race is concerned, she’s right: Hating on Michigan won’t win.
CNN and the New York Post did deep dives into McMorrow’s now-deleted tweets. A snowy April day in 2014 prompted McMorrow, then new to the state, to say “Screw you, Michigan," before using a #nyctoLA hashtag.
One wonders why McMorrow didn’t return to home New Jersey or stay in California, where the people, the politics, and the weather are more aligned with her sensibilities. What did she see in Michigan?
To a coastal carpetbagger like McMorrow, Michigan is a sleepy place where power can be harvested. Much more easily than on the East or West Coast.
Coastal politics involve big ambitions and big money. So much so that coastal money even funds campaigns like the Michigan U.S. Senate race.
But a newcomer can arrive in Michigan and rise quickly. Elissa Slotkin's first time voting in Michigan was in 2018... for herself. That year, she easily out-fundraised and beat incumbent Congressman Mike Bishop.
McMorrow, in 2018, beat out an incumbent with a family name—state Sen. Marty Knollenberg. Coastal politicians relocate to Michigan in search of easy territory to conquer, and find it.
Advising McMorrow through the tweet-delete scandal is Lis Smith, former adviser to Pete Buttigieg, before his 2020 presidential campaign flamed out. Smith also tried, and failed, to save former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo by smearing the women who accused him of lechery.
Smith started working with McMorrow after the 2022 “groomer” speech that went viral.
Twice in her memoir, McMorrow tells readers to “ignore the feds,” that state and local politics are the true path to change. Smith is one of the people who pushed McMorrow toward the national stage.
Smith needs a client who will reach the top and stay there. And McMorrow, fleeing a Michigan senate district no longer gerrymandered to produce a white Democrat senator, needs a next move.
They need each other, and they both need a win.
McMorrow’s plan is to minimize the deletions as something any normal person would do; she even took this argument to CNN.
But these belated deletions are closer to a teenager throwing her messy room into a closet and pretending it is clean. The mess is still there, even if it’s not visible at first glance.
The memoir builds to McMorrow’s one and only accomplishment as a Michigan lawmaker: a red flag law that allows the state to confiscate weapons on the mere suspicion that someone has had a mental break.
Michigan’s Great Seal, designed in 1835 by Lewis Cass, depicts a man holding a gun. McMorrow’s red flag law would let the police take that man’s gun away if enough people said he was a meanie. God forbid they say he voted three times for Donald Trump.
McMorrow hates Michigan’s gun culture. She prefers Bruce Springsteen to Bob Seger.
Oh, and she’s a Notre Dame fan.
Michigan is a unique place. You drive to Michigan, you don’t drive through it on the way to someplace else. You choose Michigan. And the people of Michigan like to feel they’ve been chosen.
The first thing an outsider politician needs to do is show they are one of us.
Jocelyn Benson, a Pittsburgh native, has tried to do this by embracing Detroit sports teams. Nobody buys it, but at some level you respect the attempt. When in Michigan, do as the Michiganders do.
McMorrow doesn’t even go through the motions.
There is no Democrat in this race who would serve Michigan well in the U.S. Senate. This we know. But at least Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens have some native affection for Michigan.
And for a state that’s besieged by carpetbaggers looking for an easy route to power, affection goes a long way.
For Mallory McMorrow, hating on Michigan won’t win. And losing is the only thing that would make her leave. That way she could return to the coasts and stop pretending.
