Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned In Brief. I’m Preet Bharara. Since the Democrats defeat in November, people have been asking who’s the future of the party? Who’s going to lead and what’s their message? Well, I’m no fortune-teller, but I can say there are some brilliant local democratic political leaders who are stepping up to the plate. One of those leaders is state Senator Mallory McMorrow of Michigan. You may remember her from a viral speech in April 2022.

Mallory McMorrow:

We cannot let hateful people tell you otherwise to scapegoat and deflect from the fact that they are not doing anything to fix the real issues that impact people’s lives.

Preet Bharara:

Today she’s a very likely candidate for the US Senate in Michigan. Now she’s out with a new book called Hate Won’t Win, and I’m excited to have her on the show today. Senator Mallory McMorrow, great to have you on the show. I’ve been dying to speak to you for a long time. Thanks so much.

Mallory McMorrow:

Preet, thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me.

Preet Bharara:

So you have a great book out which for the YouTube audience, I’m going to hold up. Hate Won’t Win: Find Your Power and Leave This Place Better Than You Found It. Before we get to that, given the timing of the book and some reports that I’ve read, if you would like to make an announcement on this very, very important podcast, Stay Tuned with Preet about your political future in the state of Michigan the floor is yours.

Mallory McMorrow:

Oh, thank you. Nothing official to announce just yet, but I have been very seriously exploring running for the US Senate and there will be an announcement very soon.

Preet Bharara:

All right. I will note for the record, for people who can’t see that you are smiling in a positive way about that question. So you have been called for some time since that viral moment that I mentioned in my intro, a rising star. How does it feel to be called a rising star for so long? At what point do you want to have risen?

Mallory McMorrow:

Well, first of all, I think it’s strange that we talk about politics and governing in terms of stars. This isn’t entertainment. Entertainment is part of how we got into this mess in the first place. So for me, I’m glad that people have noticed, but I always try to leverage whatever attention I have for good, and I hope that I have more opportunities to do that.

Preet Bharara:

So let’s go back to the video that brought you to national prominence. I won’t use the word star since you made that comment. So that was an exchange about a pretty hot button, if I can use that term, culture war issue, which you dealt with and addressed head on in an address. And your response worked. It doesn’t always seem to work. Why do you think what you did resonated with so many people across the political spectrum and what can Democrats learn from that which you did?

Mallory McMorrow:

So in that response … And to set the stage a little bit, I wasn’t sure I was going to respond initially. I was in the midst of thinking about whether or not I was going to run for re-election. I’d been drawn into a primary with a Democratic colleague of mine. And after being completely blocked from moving any legislation in my first few years, I was in a pretty dark place. I had already felt like I had let all of my supporters down, everybody who donated or knocked doors. And then this happened. A colleague accused me by name of effectively befriending children for the purpose of molesting them. Let’s just call it what it is.

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.

And I responded thinking this may be the very last speech I ever give in this chamber in my last speech in politics. So if I’m going to go down, I might as well go down swinging. And I wanted to talk directly to people who are in my position. I am not a member of the LGBTQ community. And when I talk to members of that community more than anything else, they want to be left alone just like any of us, to live their own lives.

So rather than take the bait on a culture war issue, I very intentionally identified myself multiple times as a straight white Christian married suburban mom who knows that hate will only win when people like me let it happen. And also at the end of that speech intentionally pointed out that people who are different are not the reason why healthcare costs are too high or why our roads in Michigan are in disrepair, why teachers are leaving the profession. And I hope that Democrats learn we can take the wind out of the sails of these attacks. They’re attacks on a very small percentage of our population. By framing the issue in a way that any listener can understand. Everybody votes in their own self-interest and it’s just scapegoating. It’s scapegoating and it’s nonsense. And it’s not actually addressing what most people are concerned about in this moment, which is sanity and decency and cost of living. Am I going to be able to provide for my family in the way that I want? And we don’t see that enough from Democrats.

Preet Bharara:

In the few years since you gave that speech and you addressed that issue, has the Democratic Party gotten better or worse at addressing issues in a way that everyone can understand as you described?

Mallory McMorrow:

I would have to say worse. I think about the 2024 election cycle and whenever I would watch a Lions game, I saw the same ad that everybody points to. Kamala is for they/hem, and Donald Trump is for you. And again, I think about the average person watching a Lions game who has likely never met somebody who is trans that they know of, and that Democrats too often … I think from a place of goodness, we want to defend people. We don’t want to throw people under the bus. But take the bait and debate the issue that Republicans want Democrats to debate instead of thinking, what is the person watching this game at home care about and how can we talk to that person about their life and their values and their issues in a way to destroy the attacks, reject the premise of the attack and pivot. And I don’t think Democrats have learned how to do that clearly with the results of the 2024 election.

Preet Bharara:

Your book is entitled, Hate Won’t Win. Do you think hate won in 2024?

Mallory McMorrow:

I think it took a step forward, but it didn’t win. This is about committing to a lifetime of civic engagement and service. And I make that case in my book. And what I learned throughout my lifetime it’s not going to be one and done. For every step that we view as a step forward there are people who view that as a step backwards and we’ll be fighting against us. And there’s always going to be a give and take, but I think long-term hate won’t win so long as a majority of good decent people decide to take an active role in this country.

Preet Bharara:

It’s an interesting division in your book. It’s part memoir and then part how-to. And my favorite chapter title because it’s a theme that we’ve been sounding on this podcast that I’ve been talking about with my friends and that I’m very, very worried about, that people are so distraught about what happened in the election, they’re so distraught about what’s happening on all fronts. They can’t keep up, there’s an avalanche of information and news, much of it not good that they check out. As I often mentioned, our podcast is called Stay Tuned so we’re the opposite of that. Your chapter seven is entitled, Don’t Check Out. Describe to my viewers how it can be that despite all of this, they can stay tuned and not check out and how they can tell their friends and neighbors and colleagues and fellow citizens to do the same.

Mallory McMorrow:

So it can be really tempting to check out. It feels overwhelming, it all feels like too much. But when we decide to check out, it means that we’ve given up. We’ve given up on our state and our country and our communities, and that people with more nefarious motives will be given space to take action. I talk a lot in the book about the neighborhood that I grew up in, which is a 250-old village in rural New Jersey that was vibrant and lively when I was growing up. Largely because of my mom and her neighbors who actively created a community, whether it was yard sales or hayrides in the fall or events at the volunteer firehouse. And now that I go back and visit as an adult, I see a town in disrepair. I see a lot of the houses that are falling apart. I don’t see the type of vibrancy that I saw growing up. And I think that that’s a perfect metaphor for what happens when we check out. It may feel like we can, but community doesn’t happen on its own. It collapses without us. So as people figure out how to stay engaged, my biggest tip is to pace yourself. We were not as humans designed to take in-

Preet Bharara:

It’s not a sprint.

Mallory McMorrow:

Not a sprint, it’s a marathon, which I know is-

Preet Bharara:

It’s fine.

Mallory McMorrow:

A trope at this point. But just thinking about social media and 24 hour news, we weren’t made to take in nonstop breaking news and alerts and notifications and buzzes and bings, and so just turn it off. I’m a millennial, but I still really like physical newspapers. I like that they come to my house and that I can carve out time to sit and read the news on my terms instead of constantly responding to a fire hose of information. So I think everybody should feel free to give themselves space. If you turn off your notifications, you’re not going to miss anything and check back when you’re ready and stay engaged.

Preet Bharara:

But do check back at some point.

Mallory McMorrow:

Do check back. Don’t check out.

Preet Bharara:

Stay tuned. There’s more coming up after this. There’s something that you have spoken about, written about, and it’s in your book about how you’ve engaged with the voters that seems to be about running for political office, but I thought is really a profoundly simple but important lesson for everyone on how to engage. You didn’t show up at a door, knock on the door and say, “I’m Mallory McMorrow. Here are the three issues that I care about.” Describe how you engage with folks and what lessons people can derive from what you did to engage with their friends and family and other people they might want to persuade to their point of view.

Mallory McMorrow:

So I think genuinely, I love people. I’m always shocked when I meet people in this line of work who run for office who genuinely dislike people, which feels like a strange choice. So when I get to a door or an event or any interaction, I try to go in without an agenda because people can see through that. If they know you need something out of an interaction, they’re immediately going to put their walls up. So I tend to just ask questions. I genuinely want to get to know the other person on the other side of this conversation. Sometimes I compliment something that’s on their front porch. Here in Michigan, we have a lot of porch geese that people have. They’re ceramic geese that people dress up. I love them. And I’ve found a lot of common ground with people who I think on its face have very different political views than I do.

But there was an older couple that I talk about in the book who right away signaled they don’t like Democrats. Their son was a border patrol agent on the southern border. They have a lot of guns in their pickup trucks and they don’t want Democrats to come for them. But eventually they said their daughter-in-law is a teacher and how hard her job is and there are too many kids in her classroom. And I was finally able to just by listening, find a way to enter into the conversation and say, “That is something that I really care about.” And teachers made me who I am today. And then they looked at my materials and saw a picture of my husband and I and our rescue dog who’s a 60 pound pit bull named Detroit. Detroit, the dog. She’s got stripes. She looks like the tiger statue outside of Comerica.

Preet Bharara:

You’re very committed to Michigan.

Mallory McMorrow:

Very committed to Michigan. But this couple also rescued dogs and they loved pitties and they brought out all these pictures of the dogs that they had rescued on their mantle. And all of a sudden by the end of the conversation, they said, “You can count on two votes from our house and we’ll take a yard sign.” And if I had just come in and said, “I’m Mallory and I’m running to be your state senator and here’s my issues,” they would’ve said thanks, but no thanks.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. No. It reminds me of advice that I’ve forgotten about when I was a young law student and interviewing with law firms for jobs. I don’t know who told me this. Someone said when you walk into the office of the more senior person, by definition everyone was more senior, almost exact same advice that you give people about the porch, find something on their desk or on their mantle. In fact, I think I did that with you not even realizing. The first thing we discussed was what’s behind your head on the shelves.

Mallory McMorrow:

Oh yeah.

Preet Bharara:

And it’s a simple way to just connect. I think people can be a little too aggressive on the policy before they’ve made any human connection at all so I think that’s actually very, very wise and smart.

Mallory McMorrow:

Well, that’s all this is. Politics is relationships.

Preet Bharara:

It’s something else. It’s something else. That’s a good segue to something else that you say. We always have to remember, even though we don’t talk this way and you don’t talk this way when you knock on doors, politics is about power.

Mallory McMorrow:

Is is.

Preet Bharara:

What does that mean?

Mallory McMorrow:

So I interviewed Eitan Hersh for the book who is the author of the book. Politics is For Power. And he was very critical in his book of people who engage in politics almost as a sport. And we all know them. They’re the people who watch MSNBC 24 hours a day or they can’t even entertain a conversation with somebody from the other party. And it feels like it’s good versus evil, it’s bad versus good. And that may work in sports when really the end result doesn’t matter. Apologies to my diehard sports fans. You’ll get over it .your team lost. But this isn’t a game. Politics isn’t a game. So the more time you spend engaging in the sport of politics, the less time you’re actually reaching out to people who may not always see eye to eye with you and building the majority coalition to move policy. It’s a numbers game at the end of the day. You need a majority of people to agree with you to be able to move policy forward that will benefit your community in the way that you envision. And if you don’t think that way, you’re just engaging in a game. And I think that’s really dangerous.

Preet Bharara:

But the power part is important. It’s not just to have the opportunity to speak your mind about something and have the high ground. To me, when you talk about power, it means also compromise and having coalitions and sometimes you have to … Look, it is better now to be in the majority in the state Senate then otherwise if you’re in the majority. Do you think people die on hills that they shouldn’t die on because they don’t understand that it’s about power and about getting the policies you want? enacted enacted?

Mallory McMorrow:

Oh yes. And we’ve seen that. I’ve seen this in my work where perfect is the enemy of the good. But it’s also been very strange for me. I was an industrial designer in my past life and in that line of work, you come up with a thousand different ideas. You test them, you focus group them, you are open to feedback, and your goal is to get to the best product that solves the problem ahead of you. And as I’ve entered into this line of work, I’ve watched people introduce their bill, they put their name on it, and that’s it. There’s no compromise. There’s no working across the aisle. There’s also not even asking the tough question of does this really solve the problem that we’ve set out to solve? And going in with that mindset, I’ve watched a good example here in Michigan is paid leave. Something that I’m very passionate about. I talk about in the book. We have put forward legislation on it, but because there wasn’t the work to build a coalition that includes Republicans and members of the business community and the small business association and folks who would otherwise oppose this, it’s not law.

We had a democratic trifecta in Michigan. We lost that with the Republicans taking the State House and now that opportunity is gone. And I hope that people reflect on what we could do better next time to not just stay in corner because we didn’t have the votes, we didn’t have the support to get it done.

Preet Bharara:

When you acknowledge and appreciate if you’re in politics, that politics is for power, does that cause one to be more hostile towards the adversary or less hostile because you understand what it’s all about? Or is that not the right way of thinking about it?

Mallory McMorrow:

I think there’s something to be said there. In my first four years I had flipped a district against a Republican incumbent. When I ran for office the first time. He had won by 16 points. I beat him by four. I was completely blocked by the then Republican majority from any action I introduced 59 bills on every single issue I ran on. They didn’t even grant me a single hearing. So because of that, recognizing that it wasn’t for a lack of good ideas or even ideas that were brought to me by constituents who may have been of the other political view of me, but that I didn’t have the power to enact the change. So I had this horrific attack against me, a slander. And instead of just letting that be a viral moment, I used it and we opened a PAC and we raised over two and a half million dollars to help state senate candidates across the state and took control of the state Senate for the first time in my lifetime, for my party to enact the change that we wanted to enact. So for me, that was about understanding the power dynamics, understanding what was standing in the way and changing them to benefit my constituents.

Preet Bharara:

I want to go back to message for a moment because your book is called very hopefully and optimistically and idealistically Hate Won’t Win. We talked about how politics is about power and is for power. And so I’m curious how you would complete the following well-known phrase given that you were attacked yourself as you’ve described. When they go low, we …

Mallory McMorrow:

Take power.

Preet Bharara:

That’s pretty good. Unashamedly and unabashedly.

Mallory McMorrow:

Yeah. One of the things that I thought about a lot in how I was going to respond was I had written a version of that speech originally that was about what the Republicans had done. This was in the middle of Lee Chatfield, who was our then speaker of the House of Republican who had just been accused by his sister-in-law of grooming and raping her, starting when she was 15. It was an ugly time in Michigan. And I started writing about that in my speech and I recognized pretty quickly that if I made the speech about Republicans are doing this and I’m a Democrat standing up and calling out hypocrisy on the other side of the aisle, that nobody would listen or care, and decided to scrap all of that and make it about myself and how I was raised and who my mom was and what Catholic values and Christianity meant to me to say, no, this is on us to do something different.

Preet Bharara:

So how do you think the Democrats are doing at this moment in their semi-powerless situation? They don’t have the house, they don’t have the Senate, they don’t have the White House, they don’t have a lot of state legislatures. Care to comment?

Mallory McMorrow:

It’s not going great. It is-

Preet Bharara:

Is that inevitable? Is there blame to be placed at their feet or is it just the nature of what we’ve been talking about? They just don’t have power. How much can they do?

Mallory McMorrow:

I do not accept the response. And we’ve seen some of our current Democratic leadership on the federal level say, “Well, we can’t do anything about it because we’re out of power.” That is ridiculous. Something that I learned … And I didn’t know this right away, but this is what I allude to in the book, is I learned how much power I had even when I couldn’t pass legislation. I learned how much power I had in telling stories and elevating people’s stories and using my voice and standing up and talking directly to people to A, very bluntly tell people what was standing in our way of the progress we wanted to make, and also very clearly articulating what it was we wanted to do. One of my big issues is gun violence. I lost a friend, the older brother of one of my best friends in the Virginia Tech shooting. So it’s deeply personal and has been for most of my life. And that was the through line in the book to talk about, we took power in part to finally act on gun violence in a way that the state hasn’t in my entire lifetime.

And I wish federal Democrats in this moment would do more of that. Level with people. Treat people with respect. Don’t just stand behind a podium and say we’re fighting for you, and then text a headshot of yourself with five paragraphs asking for $5 in donations. It just comes across as so disingenuous and patronizing to people instead of what I try to do is level with people to say, “We all have to participate. We’re all in this together. No Democrat and elected office can do it themselves, but here’s what we can do if we work together.”

Preet Bharara:

Okay. So you won’t announce on this program. I get that. I respect that. But let’s say you do run, I’m sure you’ve thought about what you might run on. What are the one, two, or three most important issues for the people of Michigan? The people of the country for United States Senator from that state?

Mallory McMorrow:

For us, we have to reclaim the American dream and the way that I think about it is the new American dream. I am a millennial. I am a member of the first generation to do worse than our parents. I graduated from college from Notre Dame with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt right into the recession. As a car designer, I interned as a car designer and then found myself with no job. I applied to more than 300 jobs. I lived in the back of my car. I had no health insurance. I have ADHD so that was left untreated, which made it harder to get a job. And what we are missing across the board right now is that people do not believe that there is an American dream available to them. That you can do all the right things. You can work hard, you can go to school, you can play by the rules, and you still can’t afford a house, you still can’t have kids, you still can’t have the career that you wanted. And we have to directly communicate that to people and draw a contrast to say in this moment when you can’t achieve this, Democrats are going to fight for you to be able to have those opportunities by X, Y and Z.

Simultaneously, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are stealing your taxpayer dollars to give another tax break to the wealthiest Americans in the country. None of this mystery tax cuts as if it’s free money thing. It’s your money that they’re stealing from you and they’re giving to the wealthiest people at a moment when people do not believe they have a path forward to the life they dreamed of anymore.

Preet Bharara:

How do you think the Trump presidency will play out over the next six months?

Mallory McMorrow:

It’s chaotic. It is nothing but chaos. I have had multiple events in my district and 80% of Americans have no idea who their state legislator is. When I do town halls or coffee hours, maybe 12 people come. We had more than 200 people come to one of my last events and people are so angry and scared and devastated. I had three people come who are federal workers who have lost their jobs. We’re going to have a lot of devastation frankly to build back after the Donald Trump presidency. But I also firmly believe that there is nobody who has the charismatic pull that Donald Trump has. We’ve seen a lot of people try. Kari Lake has tried to mold herself in his image and has failed a number of times. So I do think there is going to be an opportunity after this Trump presidency, but it is going to require a new generation of leadership from the Democratic Party to dig ourselves out of it and to make something new.

Preet Bharara:

So you’re hopeful and you’re optimistic.

Mallory McMorrow:

I am.

Preet Bharara:

Genuinely so.

Mallory McMorrow:

Genuinely. The fact that people keep showing up and showing up in the numbers that they are shows me that people have not given up, but they need people who believe in them and are willing to give them direction on what to do next.

Preet Bharara:

Senator Mallory McMorrow, thanks so much. The book is Hate Won’t Win: Find Your Power and Leave This Place Better Than You Found It. Really appreciate it. Good luck to you.

Mallory McMorrow:

Thanks, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

For more analysis of legal and political issues, making the headlines become a member of the CAFE Insider. Members get access to exclusive content including the weekly podcast I host with former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. Head to cafe.com/insider to sign up for a trial. That’s cafe.com/insider. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on Bluesky, or you can call and leave me a message at 833-997-7338. That’s 833-99-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The Deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.