State Sen. Mallory McMorrow’s path to a victory in the heated Democratic U.S. Senate primary might run through Michigan’s breweries and pubs, where’s she’s been meeting with hundreds of voters over the last two months.
On Tuesday, McMorrow, a second-term legislator from Royal Oak, held what her campaign said was her 17th stop on the “McMorrow on Tap Brewery Tour.” This one occurred in downtown Lansing, a block from the state Capitol, at the Irish pub Kelly’s.
About 80 people watched as McMorrow, spoke about her reasons for running, took questions from the crowd and contended that it was time “change politics” by getting secret donors’ cash out of campaigns and banning stock trading by members of Congress.
Afterward, McMorrow told reporters that she’s the candidate in the primary race gaining in the polls and that she has locked in the most small-dollar support among her primary opponents.
“I knew at the outset, a year ago, once people got to know me and they heard my story and my track record and that we were doing events like this, they would be in,” McMorrow added. “And we’ve made that gain. I’m exactly where we want to be.”
With 144 days remaining until the Aug. 4 primary, McMorrow, who gained national attention through a speech on the state Senate floor that went viral, appeared to be setting herself out as the grassroots candidate in the primary race.
U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Birmingham, whom many see as the Democratic establishment’s choice, has been leading the field in fundraising. Former candidate for governor Abdul El-Sayed of Ann Arbor, who’s widely viewed as the progressive option, has run for statewide office before and has the backing of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Adrian Hemond, a Democrat and a Michigan political consultant, said it’s way too soon to tell who has an edge in the race because the vast majority of voters aren’t paying attention yet.
“I think it’s way too early to talk about anyone having momentum in this race,” Hemond said. “Get back to me after the filing deadline.”
The deadline for candidates to submit their nominating petitions this year is April 21.
Former Flint Mayor Karen Weaver, who attended McMorrow’s stop on Tuesday at the downtown Lansing watering hole, said she believes McMorrow will be the primary winner.
“I see the excitement and the energy that she brings and the number of people that are showing up to hear her,” Weaver said. “It gives me so much hope.”
The campaigns of Stevens and El-Sayed have both criticized McMorrow in recent weeks. El-Sayed accused McMorrow of copying his homework, according to Punchbowl News.
Asked about the negative comments about her by her opponents, McMorrow indicated they pointed to where the race stood.
“I feel pretty good about it,” McMorrow said.
Will Gov. Gretchen Whitmer run for president?
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Wednesday that she hasn’t yet decided whether to run for president, according to the media outlet Semafor.
Whitmer, a Democrat who’s in her second and final term as governor, made the comment while speaking at the Blackrock Infrastructure Summit in Washington, D.C.
“My father once said to me, ‘You know, you’d have to be a sociopath to run for president,'” Whitmer said. “And then about two years ago, he said, ‘You might need to think about running for president.’
“And I said, ‘Are you calling me a sociopath, Dad’?”
Semafor reported that Whitmer wants to stay in public service.
“I just know that we’re going to have a lot of work to do as a nation and we need great people and I like to think of it as an Avengers-style approach,” Whitmer said, according to Semafor.
There has been much speculation about Whitmer’s future with some Democrats seeing her as a viable candidate for president in 2028, after she won two gubernatorial elections by wide margins in a battleground state. Democrat Joe Biden considered Whitmer to be his running mate in 2020, but he ultimately chose Sen. Kamala Harris of California.
Michigan House GOP eyes shakeup of energy mandates
House Republicans will begin holding hearings Tuesday on bills that would upend green energy mandates implemented under the Democratic trifecta in 2023, block renewable energy portfolio requirements dating back to the 2016 Republican-led Legislature, and require that regulatory decisions focus primarily on affordability and reliability.
“When government drives up the cost of that electricity through mandates that have more to do with political ideology than engineering reality, it’s not a talking point, it’s a tax on every family that flips a switch,” said state Rep. Pauline Wendzel, a Watervliet Republican who chairs House Energy and is sponsoring the legislation.
The legislation, dubbed “Project Lighthouse,” also eliminates the Energy Waste Reduction program and a grant program benefitting nonprofit groups that advocate on behalf of residential customers in rate cases.
The legislation specifically directs the commission to ensure integrated resource plans prioritize “reliability and affordability while minimizing the net cost to ratepayers.”
“The commission may consider other factors only to the extent that those factors do not materially compromise reliability or impose higher total costs on ratepayers,” the legislation says.
The legislation was immediately met with opposition from environmental groups, one of which renamed it “Project Lights Out.”
“Instead of rolling back the Clean Energy & Jobs Act, lawmakers should be working to hold utility company CEOs accountable for making billions of dollars in profits while they saddle us with the highest energy costs in the Midwest for the longest amount of time out of power in the country,” said Alex Kellogg, energy accountability manager for the Michigan League of Conservation Voters.
Duggan campaign will try to gather 40,000 signatures
Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who’s running for governor as an independent this year, kicked off his campaign’s petition-gathering effort with an event Thursday at Detroit’s Eastern Market.
As he attempts to shake up the two major parties’ hold on power in Lansing, Duggan’s team will need to collect 12,000 valid signatures from registered voters by July 16 to make the November ballot, according to the Board of State Canvassers.
Duggan’s campaign set a goal of 40,000 signatures.
“I’m holding open-door town halls and meet and greets, and people like being in rooms with folks they are supposed to disagree with,” Duggan said in a statement. “They are finding common ground.”
House, agencies want 8-week pause in work project lawsuit
A lawsuit between the Michigan House and state departments could be on pause for another eight weeks, according to a joint filing the entities made Friday with the Court of Claims.
The parties began discussions on a potential resolution to the case in late February and, so far, those discussions have been “preliminary but fruitful,” they told the court. But, with the Legislature entering a three-week spring recess after next week, “significant practical difficulties” could arise in those negotiations, prompting the need for an eight-week adjournment.
The suit stems from the GOP-led House’s December vote to block about $645 million in work project authorizations. The departments, based on an attorney general opinion, planned to continue spending the money and the House sued to stop it.
Later tallies of the actual work projects blocked by the vote came to about $369 million, according to House Speaker Matt Hall.
Endorsement watch
State Rep. Joe Tate, the Detroit Democrat and former Michigan House speaker, endorsed former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink in the Democratic primary in mid-Michigan’s 7th Congressional District. Brink also picked an endorsement this week from state Rep. Noah Arbit, D-West Bloomfield Township.
Brink is vying for the Democratic nomination against Matt Maasdam of Ann Arbor Township and William Lawrence of Lansing.
In the race for the Republican nomination for attorney general, former two-term Attorney General Bill Schuette has endorsed Eaton County Prosecutor Doug Lloyd over Birmingham attorney Kevin Kijewski.
Tweet of the Week
The Insider report’s “Tweet of the Week,” recognizing a social media post that was worthy of attention or, possibly, just a laugh, from the previous week goes to state Rep. Will Snyder.
In his free time, the Muskegon Democrat has been doing the people’s work by highlighting and reviewing fish fries across his district as part of a Lenten series he’s dubbed Fish Frydays. This week, after prior stops in North Muskegon, Norton Shores, and Dalton Township, Snyder discovered a healthier baked cod at a church in Muskegon.
“Just when you thought we were ‘fried out,’ Fish Frydays finds a healthy option at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church!” Snyder wrote.
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This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Insider: Mallory McMorrow makes U.S. Senate pitch one pub at a time
Reporting by Craig Mauger and Beth LeBlanc, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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