In conversation with Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow
When I jumped on a Google Hangout with Senator McMorrow several weeks ago, I asked her what her role would be in 2020, despite her own re-election race being three whole years away. She told me her plans were to fundraise for the Senate caucus and support other local candidates.
Cue the plot twist: a couple of weeks ago, federal judges ruled that Michigan’s legislative districts are unconstitutional and must be redrawn. While Senator McMorrow’s 13th District wasn’t ruled unconstitutional, it’s hard to say what’s going to happen next.
While we wait to see what comes of the ruling (new maps need to be redrawn by August), read on to hear about why Mallory ran and how she’s approaching her first months as a freshman state senator. While you’re at it, take a look at her latest legislative moves to ban conversion therapy and her tear-inducing campaign videos.
[Semi]political (SP): tell us about yourself!
Mallory McMorrow (MM): I was recently a first time political candidate, and I am a designer-turned-creative director-turned legislator. I’m also the youngest woman ever elected to the Michigan Senate.
I grew up in New Jersey, but Michigan is my chosen home state. I went to school for industrial design at Notre Dame. When I won a car design competition and got my first head-on experience with media, it was a crash course in being a woman in a male-dominated industry. That unexpectedly kicked off my giving women a place and a voice in every career path that I had.
I interned at Mazda for a while, and then the auto industry fell apart. Trying to be a car designer in 2008 was probably the worst timing possible. With a retail job and no health insurance, I couch-hopped, I lived in the backseat of my car for a couple of weeks, and I tried to pull it together. Eventually, I found my way to Mattel in LA, and later Gawker Media in New York.
My husband and I moved to Michigan in 2015. For me, Michigan is a place that I’ve always held up with such a sense of reverence, because this is the place where we created the auto industry and the middle class, and it’s where we have the ability to change the world.
“Michigan felt like a microcosm of everything else that was happening in the country.”
SP: What made you decide to run for office?
MM: In 2016, Michigan felt like a microcosm of everything else that was happening in the country. We are a state built on building things, and it felt like we were struggling with the question of whether we try to hold on to a time in the past that no longer exists.
For all the hateful rhetoric that came out of the 2016 election, I understood why people were fearful of moving forward. It still broke my heart to see that we could put kindness and neighborliness aside in order to hold on to the past. In 2016, I remember when neighbors down the street from me took down an American flag and put up a Trump flag. This was two days after the Access Hollywood tapes were released, and this family had two middle school girls. It was such a gut-punch moment to me. I thought, “wow, this is happening, and it’s happening here.”
As I started to get more involved, I didn’t see the reverence that I hold for the state of Michigan coming out of Lansing. So I learned how to run for office through Emerge Michigan, declared in August of 2017, and flipped a district against an incumbent in November of 2018. It was out of left field. Nobody ever thought we could do it, but we put together a phenomenal campaign, with more than 500 volunteers. Now, I’m three months into the job, and I’m loving every minute of it.
SP: Congrats again! How has that transition been from being a candidate to being in office? What has come more naturally to you, and what’s more on the challenging side?
MM: There’s definitely some culture shock after going fast and furious on the campaign for so long. The process of getting up and running in the legislature is a little slow-going at first. But my days are currently 12 to 16 hours long, and they have been since January 1st. My attitude in the first month was that I would take everything that came at me and be a sponge.
I’m learning that this system is set up to be very binary: Democrats caucus with Democrats, Republicans caucus with Republicans. There are very few natural opportunities to work with other people, so you learn that you have to make those opportunities. It’s been an adjustment but I really like it. My learning now involves owning my time and being transparent about how that time is spent.
SP: How are you making time and effort to meet with other legislators and work together with them?
MM: Right off the bat, I made it a point to set one-on-one meetings with as many of the committee members as I could, particularly across the aisle. One of the things I’ve taken away from my career before getting into politics is that people like to work with people they like, and I think that’s something we often forget.
I have a colleague who has over a hundred cows and that’s his daily life, which is very different than the way we live in Southeast Michigan. I have colleagues that represent ten plus counties, and I’ve got eight cities within one county. We’re all very different and that’s okay, but we need to find the time to build relationships with each other.
“How do we look at what our core competencies are and what we are better at than anybody else, and evolve that?”
SP: People are talking about Detroit becoming the center of mobility. Since you’ve worked in the auto industry, I’m curious about your perspective on mobility and the auto industry in Michigan.
MM: I’m the co-chair of the automotive caucus, so I think about this all the time. One of the things we’ve learned is that trying to pivot away from our signature industry was not the best move coming out of the recession in 2018. How do we look at what our core competencies are and what we are better at than anybody else, and evolve that?
It’s not just about making a car that works. How do we think about urban planning, design, and infrastructure? A lot of it comes down to talent attraction. I’m being very vocal about the fact that we are losing out to other states. People are going to places like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Minneapolis: all places that are not cheaper to live in. We saw this play out with Amazon; granted, we dodge a bullet with what we were ready to give them. But it was an interesting creative exercise for them to flat-out tell us that we do not have the transit and the talent.
We’re kidding ourselves if we think we’re just going to make trucks and SUVs the same way that we always have for the rest of our lives. The industry is going to change more rapidly in the next ten years than it ever has, so we have to move quickly to keep it.
“How do we get out of this cult of personality that happens in politics and get it back to being team-based?”
SP: I’m curious how you’ve navigated the different turns of your career trajectory, and how your private industry experience has been useful to you in the public sphere.
MM: Even though Mattel was a company that was about toy design, innovation, and creativity, I learned how to navigate internal politics. I made the jump to Gawker Media, and the culture was so different. I struggled there in terms of forcing myself to have work-life balance. I worked myself into the ground. It got to the point where my body physically shut down. I learned that the perks that seem exciting aren’t worth the risk.
Now, in the public space, I want to hire really, really, great people. There are a ton of people that I’ve worked with in my previous life who I think would be fantastic in my office, but the legislature doesn’t pay particularly well, and there’s a lot of turnover. My office thinks a lot about how we can create an office where there’s room for growth, and where you feel valued.
I try to find moments to highlight the people in my office and make sure that others know that it’s not just me. Politics is very strange because my name is on everything, so how do we get out of this cult of personality that happens in politics and get it back to being team-based? That’s why I’m vocal about the five hundred volunteers on my campaign. It is not something I did by myself.
SP: Who/what do you consider your community?
MM: I would not be able to do any of this without my husband. He worked on Jennifer Granholm’s first campaign for governor. I don’t know that he ever expected to be dragged back into Michigan politics via me. He is my best friend, my husband, and also my political strategist and director.
Since moving to Michigan, I’ve come into my own in having a strong group of women friends. For too long, I always put my work first and let everything else fall by the wayside. Going through the experience of a campaign is so personal, and it made me realize how important those relationships are and that I’m not willing to prioritize work over all else.
SP: Who are some people who helped you get where you are today?
MM: Ray and Charles Eames were the example. They were two people from different parts of the country who moved to Michigan, fell in love, and changed the world. It points to how special this place is.
Kacee Must, the owner of Citizen Yoga, is a very good friend of mine. We’ve had many long conversations about the challenges of being women who are driven. I admire that she’s been able to build the company that she has, and that she’s built it around the ideas of suicide prevention and building community.
I had a fantastic boss at Mattel in Tanya Mann who is still at Mattel. She made a lasting impression on me for how she ran things. She was never more important than anyone else. She struck a balance of being able to talk to you like an equal while delegating like nobody else I’ve ever seen.
SP: Anything you’re looking forward to right now?
MM: I’m looking forward to the next five days, where I am going to take time to build out my legislative guide. I’m putting all this work together after our first quarter, which I think is going to set us up well for the second quarter. I’m really grateful and excited to have this time off, but it’s not really “time off.” I’m taking the time to actually sit, think, and process, because I haven’t had the time to since I took office.
“Before we talk about any issues, we have to talk about the erosion of trust in our public institutions.”
SP: Any final thoughts?
MM: My biggest concern right now is that before we talk about any issues, we have to talk about the erosion of trust in our public institutions. There was a Gallup poll that said that more than 30 percent of people think that the number one issue in our country right now is the government. We talk about all of these big issues — fixing education, our roads, our infrastructure. But until we restore basic public trust, we’re not going to get there. Until we get people to trust that government is valuable, I don’t know how we’re going to move forward on anything.
You can contribute to Team McMorrow here. Follow Mallory on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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