The day after President Donald Trump won his first election in 2016, Michigan Senate Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow googled how to run for office. She was a Michigan transplant from New Jersey and an industrial designer by trade, and had never worked on a campaign.
In 2025, months into Trump‘s second term, McMorrow would launch her campaign as a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate ahead of the 2026 November election.
November marks a turning point for the future of the Democratic Party, which lacks much of the federal power needed to combat the Trump administration. Currently, the Republican Party has control over the presidency, the House of Representatives and the Senate.
McMorrow hopes to gain some of that federal power back in her pursuit of a U.S. Senate seat.
"When we come together and get organized and use our voices, you can make the change you want to see, even if we don’t hold the gavels on the battle," the senator said at an Michigan State University College Democrats event Tuesday evening.
Currently a state senator in Michigan, McMorrow has remained a vocal critic of the Trump administration. During the 2024 Democratic National Convention, she warned attendees about Project 2025, a playbook for the conservative movement’s takeover of the federal government that was a target of Democrats during the campaign. That document laid the groundwork for several Trump initiatives during his first year in office, including drastically downsizing the Department of Education and ramping up deportation efforts.
Change takes time and organized effort, McMorrow said.
After the Feb. 13, 2023, MSU campus shooting that killed three and wounded five others, McMorrow credited the efforts of MSU students for helping pass her bill on red flag laws, which had previously been in five years of development.
The senate hopeful pledged to continue to protect the interests of Michiganders and MSU students at the federal level. As a student at the University of Notre Dame, McMorrow remembers feeling "brushed off" by politicians who "didn’t care," yet would turn around and complain about the lack of young voters.
"We need to listen to students, and we need to be putting forward policy ideas in Washington that are going to help students," the senator told The State News.
