Mallory McMorrow may have just had her “deplorables” moment — the kind that tends to land precisely the way it did when Hillary Clinton used the term in 2016, a flashpoint that reshaped the race.
The Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, who has spent months trying to position herself as a pragmatic moderate in a purple state, is now facing renewed scrutiny over old tweets that suggest something very different.
In posts from 2016 that were later deleted as she ramped up her Senate campaign, McMorrow disparaged “Middle America” and wrote that “days like these…make me miss California even more.”
That tension — between the candidate she was and the one she is now presenting — goes to the heart of her campaign.
Since her election to the Michigan Legislature in 2018, McMorrow has built a record firmly aligned with progressive priorities: expanding LGBTQ+ protections under the state’s civil rights law, defending abortion rights, advancing gun control measures and voting to repeal Right to Work in 2023.
She has also championed economic policies rooted in equity and a more active role for government.
There’s nothing inherently disqualifying about that record — in fact, it puts her well in line with what the Democratic base seems to want.
But it underscores the reality that McMorrow is now running statewide in a must-win seat for the U.S. Senate from a place where elections are decided at the margins — and where political identity matters.
It especially matters in Michigan’s Democratic primary, which is exposing a broader identity question for the party — how far is too far left in a battleground, purple state?
To her credit, McMorrow has worked within Democratic leadership to build her profile, rather than positioning herself as an outsider. She is often viewed as less ideologically rigid than progressive figures like Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and even compared to her primary opponent Abdul El-Sayed.
But the tweets offer a more candid glimpse into how she has viewed the very voters she is now trying to win over.
McMorrow can argue that she has evolved — and many candidates do. Voters will tolerate evolution. What they don’t tolerate is condescension.
Michigan voters understand and complain about the state’s challenges — the roads, the economy, the winters. They live them. But that’s different from dismissing the culture of “Middle America” altogether or signaling a preference for somewhere else.
That’s what makes these comments politically risky.
In another tweet, McMorrow declared, “Cars are dead” — a line that lands differently in a state whose identity and economy remain deeply tied to the auto industry.
“Thoughts after Scalia(‘s death), on life: Never be the type of person that makes people cheer when you’re dead,” she wrote in a different tweet, another example of how social media often captures instinct more candidly than any campaign message.
She deleted those posts for a reason. And the entire spectacle highlights the risks of past and current social media use for all public figures.
The question now is whether voters will see them as a relic of the past — or as a more honest reflection of her instincts than the version of herself she is now offering voters.
In an era and in a race that hinges on authenticity as much as ideology, voters tend to know the difference.
kbuss@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Buss: McMorrow can’t rewrite her record on ‘Middle America’
Reporting by Kaitlyn Buss, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
