VIDEO: McMorrow Gets Real About Campaigning as a Mom

Yesterday, Michigan Senate Majority Whip and candidate for U.S. Senate Mallory McMorrow posted a new video to her campaign social media, with an excerpt of a speech she delivered to the Progressive Democratic Women’s Caucus of Muskegon County. In it, McMorrow speaks candidly about the realities of balancing motherhood with serving as a State Senator and campaigning for the United States Senate.

Watch the full video here. Download the video here.

“We do all of this work, all of us in this room, knowing that it will mean time away from our families. That there will be weeks when you find yourself scrambling to find childcare, where you want to tear your hair out. Weeks when you think so much about how much easier it would be to just quit,” McMorrow says. “But you don't, because they matter.” 

Watch the full video here or read the transcript below:

There was one day in October, and I was feeling really good about myself.

On this day, I knocked on a door in a winding cul de sac in Troy.

The woman who answered was around my mom's age. I introduced myself, and I told her that I was running to be her State Senator. I handed her my lit and she turned it over a couple of times.

“Are you married?” She asked. “Yes,” I told her, and I pointed to the picture of my husband, Ray and our dog on the literature.

“Do you have any kids?” I said, “No.” We had just been married the year before at Eastern Market, right before I filed to run for office.

“Well, are you going to have kids? And when? And how many?”

She told me that her own daughter was pregnant and that it would be her first grandchild. Then she stopped me. “I'm sorry,” she said, “I need to know that my senator is in the office representing me the whole time. I can't vote for you. This isn't a job for a mom.

I thought about her own daughter and how she needed an advocate, how she deserved a voice. Of course, women could do this. Of course, moms should do this.

But standing here tonight, I'm gonna admit something to all of you. I come to you tonight very drained. You see, this week is also that gap. It is the gap between the last week of summer school and the first week of regular school for my daughter's preschool.

Somehow, my husband and I timed it completely wrong in balancing everything, we totally screwed up the dates, so we found ourselves scrambling this week for childcare, for someone to be with our brilliant and endlessly energetic four year old, so that we could maintain two full time jobs on top of a statewide US Senate campaign.

So many women here know that gap. I found myself worried about telling my campaign team, about stressing them out, thinking that they had wished they worked for any other kind of candidate. One without a kid, one who doesn't have to worry about who's watching her young child, knowing how hard they've worked to arrange a full schedule of fundraisers and meet and greets and union training facility tours and events just like this.

This week, I found myself deeply understanding why so many women just quit.

We do this work to write a New American Dream. To ensure that it's not just some relic of the past. We do all of this work, all of us in this room, knowing that it will mean time away from our families. That there will be weeks when you find yourself scrambling to find childcare, where you want to tear your hair out. Weeks when you think so much about how much easier it would be to just quit. 

But you don't, because they matter, and because you know that you can make it easier for the next woman who comes after you. And because you know that there are rooms full of women just like this one who know what you are going through and who have your back.