WJR: McMorrow: “We Don't Have to Accept the Status Quo”

MICHIGAN — Today, Michigan Senate Majority Whip and U.S. Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow joined WJR and outlined how she’s battling Trump’s corruption and protecting Michigan families from Big Tech. With a month and a half to go, McMorrow is criss-crossing the state, talking with voters, and showing why she is the best candidate to take on Mike Rogers in November.

Find excerpts of the conversation below:

I am in the car right now, en route to Kalamazoo for a meet and greet. We’re on our ninth oil change. So we are getting all across the state, and I feel great, you know, with six weeks left, people are really just tuning in to this election, they're just getting their ballots. I've got a strong case to make to voters that we don't have to accept the status quo. We also don't have to accept somebody who's never won an election before. In this primary, I have won tough races. I helped flip the entire state senate to Democrats, and as majority whip, I've gotten a lot done.

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I just don't think most Michiganders view themselves in a box or in lanes, you know. There are certainly some issues that I have been aggressive on, like gun violence prevention and reproductive rights, things that are important to me. But I'm also the chair of the economic development committee. I work across the aisle really well with the end goal of how do we deliver for our kids, how do we root out corruption, how do we make things work better for people, and I think that's why I'm sort of tough to place in this race. You've got a much more conservative, moderate candidate, you've got a far left progressive, and then people are trying to figure out where to put me. I think that makes me the best fit for Michiganders, because a lot of Michiganders don't put themselves neatly in a box.

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My ethos comes down to two big issues. Number one is rooting out corruption and unrigging a system that doesn't work for anybody. I think one of the most bipartisan beliefs right now is that government is corrupt and it's not working for us. So, that's why I support overturning Citizens United, getting dark money out of politics, banning congressional stock trading, so that you know people aren't going into office to enrich themselves, they're actually working for you.

The other key issue is protecting our kids and families. I was on a panel just recently with a mom here in Michigan who lost her daughter to suicide after getting addicted to social media. She was using Instagram, and the algorithm started serving her content about eating disorders and suicide, and she's no longer with us. The federal government whiffed on regulating social media and allowed them to create products that are quite literally killing our kids, and AI is developing more rapidly than any other technology before it. I'm one of the only candidates in the country that's put out a comprehensive plan to ensure that people come first, not these big tech companies, and that tech should serve us, and not the other way around.

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To me, the biggest thing is we can't just accept when the tech companies say just trust us…we need to put real, sensible guardrails in place, and you know, reject the notion that somehow that's standing in the way of innovation. It's making sure that, just like a car, a car is tested, it's got seat belts, airbags, if something goes wrong with it, you can recall it. There's real recourse. It is not released to the public until it is verified to be safe. The same thing should be true with AI— AI is a product. We need to make sure that people are protected, that it doesn't lead to massive job loss, and that it's not used to make decisions about, let's say, your health care or whether you get a job without knowing about it and you having recourse.

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You know, it's simple. This is a bridge we were supposed to have a ribbon-cutting a couple of weeks ago. All of a sudden, it was pulled down. This is something that Governor Rick Snyder started when he was in office. The Canadians paid for the whole thing. 1000s of working men and women, union members have built this bridge, and it's ready to open. It's ready to go. It will help our truckers. I've heard from a lot of truckers over the last couple of days who said, yes, open this damn bridge, and I wanted to point it out, because all of the sudden, the Moroun family, who owns the competing bridge, they donated a million bucks to Trump's super PAC. And then shortly thereafter, the president started attacking the Gordie Howe bridge, something that he had supported in his first term. We just got to get it open. This is an example of the type of corruption that people are just fed up with, I think, on both sides of the aisle, and we needed to call it out.

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