On April 2, 2025, propelled by a viral speech in the Michigan Senate in 2022 and another at the 2024 Democratic National Convention—Project 2025 in hand—State Senator Mallory McMorrow announced her intention to run to replace outgoing Senator Gary Peters. Her launch video embodied what would quickly become the central thesis of her campaign and the case it would make over the next 458 days. She flipped a red seat and helped deliver Democrats a governing trifecta in the state legislature. She fought back against Trump, Republicans, and even her own party’s establishment. The underlying message of her campaign was this: politicians like her were the future of the Democratic Party.
Enter Congresswoman Haley Stevens and physician Abdul El-Sayed, who would put that assertion to the test and, ultimately, prove it wrong.
Viral sensationalism paired with a battle-tested biography is, on paper, a compelling case for the U.S. Senate. However, sandwiched between that narrative were two campaigns that functioned as caricatures of a national divide between the moderate Democratic establishment and the insurgent progressive “Tea Part” left. Congresswoman Stevens is unabashedly pro-Israel (“Israel comes to [her] in my dreams”), backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and open to accepting PAC contributions from corporations. El-Sayed, an ethnically Egyptian physician born in Detroit, is unabashedly pro-Palestine, backed by Senator Bernie Sanders, and supportive of abolishing of ICE and Medicare for All.
McMorrow never fit into either of these nationalized ideological camps within the Democratic Party—adamantly rejecting PAC contributions early on, while also dismissing Medicare for All in favor of a public option. But perhaps the most evident example of McMorrow’s political tight-roping was on Israel. In April, she refused to take a clear stance on future aid to Israel while her two opponents took opposing positions. Then, in September, a report alleged that her campaign internally drafted an “outstanding” AIPAC policy paper. By October, McMorrow affirmed that Israel was committing genocide, a position she quickly dropped, later arguing that using the term amounted to an unnecessary “purity test.” It was this type of inconsistency on a wedge issue like Israel that would later plague McMorrow throughout the campaign.
McMorrow’s insistence on riding the waves between the ideologies of her two opponents was not destined to produce a wipeout on its own, but it became impossible to maintain the longer it continued. In mid-March, she received Senator Elizabeth Warren’s endorsement, which legitimized her as a solid left-of-center alternative to Stevens. But by late March, the Goldilocks coalition McMorrow had cultivated since October 2025—a mix of mismatched ideological groups held together by an anti-establishment narrative that had allowed her to briefly overtake El-Sayed and, in some polls, Stevens—hit a serious roadblock: the Hasan Piker question.
McMorrow’s campaign slammed El-Sayed for campaigning with Hasan Piker, comparing the left-wing streamer to the far-right Christian nationalist commentator Nick Fuentes. “[Piker] is somebody who says extremely offensive things in order to generate clicks and views and followers … a provocateur, to put it lightly, who says things that are misogynistic and antisemitic, and said that the United States deserved 9/11,” she lampooned. In doing so, the McMorrow campaign negatively polarized many younger voters, driving them towards El-Sayed. The calculation that Piker’s past inflammatory statements would hurt El-Sayed never came to fruition, partly due to Piker’s status as a nonentity among older voters while being much more well-known with young progressives who, up until that point, were actively undecided between her and El-Sayed. By May, El-Sayed polled in the lead.
Meanwhile, Stevens secured an endorsement from former Senator Debbie Stabenow, who had previously ruled one out—a sign the Democratic establishment was growing increasingly concerned about El-Sayed. In response, McMorrow attacked Stevens for a joint AIPAC fundraiser with Republican Senator Susan Collins. By then, however, the most ardent anti-AIPAC Democrats—young voters, namely—had coalesced around El-Sayed.
Then, a Politico story broke casting doubts on El-Sayed’s medical records. The McMorrow campaign once again attempted to turn the focus onto El-Sayed in hopes of regaining momentum. “If Michigan voters can’t trust El-Sayed to be honest about something that is so central to his entire rationale for running, how can they trust him to be honest about what he’d do as a United States Senator?” her campaign asked. Instead, the move pushed undecided voters who viewed the attacks as overblown and desperate away, contributing to McMorrow’s polling implosion in June after a month of stagnation and decline.
On July 5, McMorrow dropped out of the race, bringing us to where we are today, as what was once an unprecedented three-way primary morphs into the classic national struggle between the Democratic establishment and the insurgent left. McMorrow sought to put a twist on this age-old debate between the left and center, but even some of her own supporters disagreed with her overly calculated, pragmatic approach. The McMorrow Mirage from October to March was the product of this tremendous needle-threading to craft a narrative that ultimately became too complex for its own good. The campaign’s consistent inconsistencies—from evolving policy positions to overly aggressive attacks and old tweets resurfacing deriding Michigan—stood in sharp contrast to the consistent authenticity projected by both Stevens and El-Sayed. Michiganders rejected McMorrow early because while Stevens and El-Sayed spent an entire campaign showing Michiganders who they are, McMorrow could never quite figure out who she wanted to be.
You can also read this article on Bates’ Substack.
