Mallory McMorrow, the state senator whose fiery April speech denouncing the treatment of the LGBTQ community as a “hollow, hateful scheme” made her an instant political celebrity on the left, has more than Raised $1 million on behalf of her fellow Michigan Democrats.
For an individual state legislator, that’s an impressive amount, campaign finance experts said — although in the past high-profile legislative races in other states have brought in as much as $10 million in total spending. Ms. McMorrow’s fundraising amount is more than twice what she raised in her 2018 race, in which she ousted a Republican incumbent.
In an interview, Ms. McMorrow said her goal was to help turn over the Michigan State Senate, which Republicans have controlled since 1984.
“I’m fundamentally convinced that the only way we can move the needle on anything in Michigan is by flipping the Senate,” Ms. McMorrow said. “I mean, we ran from behind forever.”
Reflecting the national platform Ms McMorrow received after her speech, more than 11,000 donors from all 50 states contributed, according to her campaign treasurer, Ray Wert, her husband and journalist. She’s become a regular on liberal podcasts, late-night television and MSNBC in the weeks since her viral moment, which came after a colleague in the Michigan State Senate accused her in a fundraising email of wanting “nurturing and sexualizing” children.
The number of fundraising trips and media requests has been so overwhelming, Ms McMorrow said, that she enlisted the pro bono help of Lis Smith, a Democratic communications strategist who most recently worked on the presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg, who is now the transportation secretary. Anthony Mercurio, a former financial director of Mr Buttigieg who helped him raise millions in 2020, has also been brought on board.
The money has gone into a combination of accounts, her campaign said: the Michigan Senate Democratic Fund; the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee; its leadership fund, called A More Perfect Michigan; and its own nomination committee.
Through A More Perfect Michigan, Ms. McMorrow helps fellow Democrats in seven key races. The current 38-seat senate in Michigan is 22 Republicans and 16 Democrats, though Democrats say the chamber is once again competitive after an independent commission re-determines district boundaries. If the Democrats keep the governorship and flip just three of those seats, they’ll secure the majority.
Republicans have long maintained the balance of power in national legislatures, reflecting conservatives’ greater focus on election racing and their deeper institutional roots in state politics. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, they currently hold 54 percent of state seats nationwide and 61 percent of the 98 chambers contested by parties.
Democrats hope to reclaim some of those chambers in November, though the political environment could make it challenging to defend many of the 37 chambers they still control. Some Democratic strategists privately say they may have better luck in 2024, expecting voters’ sour views on the economy and the current government to have shifted in their favor by then.
State lawmakers, long considered a backwater of American politics, have been hotly contested since the 2020 election. After his loss, former President Donald J. Trump and his allies pressured state lawmakers in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to undo President Biden’s victories in those states. Republicans are pushing for undisputed majorities in those and other major swing states, with a view to gaining full control of the state election mechanism by 2024.
For their part, Democrats have put millions into the realignment in recent years, an additional effort in response to the deep losses they suffered after Republicans heavily reshaped district lines in their favor after the 2010 midterm elections.
Mrs. McMorrow, 35, grew up in New Jersey and graduated from the University of Notre Dame. She represents the 13th district in the Michigan State Senate, a suburb outside Detroit, but is seeking reelection in the newly redrawn Eighth District.
She faces one opponent, Marshall Bullock, in the Democratic primary on August 2.