Michigan Democratic Senate hopeful Mallory McMorrow thought thousands of social media posts were gone for good. A CNN KFile investigation proved otherwise.
Archived records recovered from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine surfaced roughly 6,000 posts McMorrow had scrubbed from her account after entering the race to fill the seat being vacated by outgoing Sen. Gary Peters.
The recovered material is proving costly. Among the deleted posts, McMorrow took aim at the rural Midwest, expressed regret over ever leaving California, and indicated she cast votes in that state well after publicly claiming Michigan as her permanent home.
The residency question cuts to the heart of the controversy. McMorrow stated in her 2025 autobiography that she “relocated permanently” to Michigan in 2014. The archived posts suggest a more complicated picture.
The CNN review found posts in which McMorrow described herself as a California resident as late as July 2016 — two years after her stated permanent move.
She repeatedly referenced voting in California’s June 2016 Democratic primary, encouraged others to register there, and identified herself as a constituent of California Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu that same July. Public records confirm she did not register to vote in Michigan until August 2016.
The voting history carries particular weight given McMorrow’s own words on the subject. In 2024, she publicly condemned a voter for casting a ballot in a state where they no longer lived, characterizing the act as “illegal.”
Her campaign moved quickly to contain the fallout.
Spokesperson Hannah Lindow described the California-to-Michigan transition as “a process” that was not complete until mid-2016, saying McMorrow remained registered in California during that period and voted by mail in the June primary.
Lindow characterized 2014 as the beginning of McMorrow’s move, not its conclusion.
Lindow further described the removed posts as “normal tweets by a normal person,” citing McMorrow’s record in the state legislature on wages, universal pre-K, school meal programs, and gun legislation.
The campaign declined to specify which individual positions McMorrow currently stands behind. The content of the deleted posts extends well beyond the residency issue.
In November 2016, responding to another user’s remarks about a Detroit diner, McMorrow wrote that one of her “first reactions” following Donald Trump’s election victory was “I wish I never left California” — though she followed that by saying a week in Detroit made her want to buy a home there.
A December 2016 post went further. McMorrow wrote: “I had a dream that the U.S. amicably broke off into The Ring (coasts + Can + Mex + parts Mich/Tex) and Middle America.”
The post continued, describing The Ring nominating Barack Obama as Prime Minister and offering every person $1,000 and six months to choose a side.
Other recovered posts show McMorrow comparing Trump and his supporters to Nazis, supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, and declaring “Cars are dead” — a striking sentiment for a candidate seeking to represent a state whose economy is anchored by the automotive industry.
A 2014 post read: “I’m particularly proud of my alma mater #NotreDame for offering a White Privilege seminar.”
McMorrow’s remarks about members of the U.S. Supreme Court had already drawn attention before the tweet controversy broke. During a public discussion about the Court, she questioned whether engaging with the justices served any purpose.
“Is there any sense in dealing with the Supreme Court, writing them, calling them?” she said. “I blame them for a lot. I don’t know what to do about that, you know. I call, but I just don’t know if it’s a waste of time.”
She then recounted learning that Justice Amy Coney Barrett — a fellow Notre Dame alumna — and Justice Brett Kavanaugh had been seen together at a tailgate.
“I was like, I would not be able to control myself,” McMorrow said. “That would be bad. There would be beers thrown in people’s faces.”
Michigan’s Senate race ranks among the most consequential in the country for determining control of the chamber. It is one of only two seats Democrats currently hold in states that Trump carried in 2024, with Georgia being the other.
McMorrow faces Rep. Haley Stevens and progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed in the Democratic primary, scheduled for August.
She has campaigned as the centrist option in the field — a posture the surfaced posts now directly complicate.
