Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, deleted roughly 6,000 social media posts, and the ones that survived in web archives paint a picture of a candidate who spent years disparaging the very state and people she now asks to send her to Washington.
The mass deletion, first flagged by CNN's KFILE investigative unit, reportedly took place in 2025 after the New York Post began reporting on several of McMorrow's old comments. Fox News Digital reported that archived versions of the scrubbed posts show McMorrow mocking Middle America, pining for California, and comparing Trump supporters to followers of Hitler and Stalin.
The fallout has been swift. McMorrow's own Democratic primary rivals have seized on the posts, Republicans are hammering the contrast between her public persona and her private social media record, and her campaign is left insisting that trashing your home state is just what "normal people" do.
In December 2016, McMorrow posted a fantasy about the country splitting in two. "I had a dream that the U.S. amicably broke off into The Ring (coasts + Can + Mex + parts Mich/Tex) and Middle America," she wrote. A follow-up added: "Oh and The Ring nominated Obama as Prime Minister and everyone was given $1,000 and six months to pick a side."
The message was clear enough. The coasts were the desirable half. Middle America was the leftover.
That was not a one-off. In November 2016, responding to another user's comments about diversity in Detroit, McMorrow wrote: "I wish I never left California." Two months later, in January 2017, she posted: "There are days like these that make me miss California even more." The New York Post reported that another deleted post from April 2014 read: "Aaaand it's snowing. Screw you, Michigan. #NYCtoLA."
These are the words of someone who viewed Michigan as a downgrade, and said so publicly, repeatedly, over a period of years.
The Michigan gripes were only part of the archive. Shortly after President Trump began his first term in 2017, McMorrow posted a Dr. Seuss cartoon referring to Nazi Germany alongside the caption: "Dr. Seuss, 1941. We've been here before, America. #AmericaFirst #NoMuslimBan." Months later, she replied to another user: "Agreed. But how do we fight back? Hitler had supporters. Stalin had supporters. Putin has supporters. No one will change their minds."
In October 2020, she urged followers to watch a video featuring a Holocaust survivor "drawing parallels between Nazi Germany and Trump's 'authoritarian aspirations.'" The pattern is familiar: a progressive politician who casually equated mainstream Republican voters with history's worst regimes, then tried to scrub the record before running statewide.
The Washington Examiner noted that the resurfaced posts also included support for Black Lives Matter and anti-car comments such as "Cars are dead", raising questions about whether McMorrow has been presenting herself as a centrist while holding far more progressive positions. That gap between brand and record is precisely the kind of thing voters in a swing state tend to notice.
It is not the first time a Michigan Democrat has faced scrutiny for trying to conceal damaging information from public view.
McMorrow's autobiography, published in 2025, states she "relocated permanently" from the Los Angeles area to Michigan in 2014. But the timeline her own posts create tells a more complicated story.
Fox News Digital reported that McMorrow repeatedly referenced voting in California's June 2016 Democratic Primary and urged other voters to do the same. She also referenced voting in person in the Los Angeles area in November 2014 and described herself in 2016 as a constituent of Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu, who represents a California district.
Fox News Digital further reported that McMorrow and her husband did not vacate their California apartment until 2016, and public records show she registered to vote in Michigan in August 2016. California law prohibits non-residents from voting in its elections.
In 2024, McMorrow chided someone on social media who said they voted in a state they no longer lived in. The contradiction speaks for itself.
Michigan has seen its share of questionable conduct by state Democrats around voting rules, and voters can be forgiven for wondering whether the people who lecture them about election integrity apply the same standards to themselves.
McMorrow's campaign spokesperson, Hannah Lindow, dismissed the posts as harmless. She told Fox News Digital:
"These are normal tweets by a normal person. Normal people complain about the weather. The Michigan sky does in fact sometimes 's--- ice.' She stands by that."
Lindow also pointed to McMorrow's legislative record, saying she had spent "the past eight years fighting and delivering to make people's lives better: higher wages, universal pre-K, no kid going hungry in schools, comprehensive gun violence prevention laws, and more."
That framing might hold if the posts were limited to weather complaints. They were not. Dreaming about the country splitting into a coastal paradise and a flyover leftover is not griping about snow. Comparing your political opponents to Hitler is not small talk. And deleting 6,000 posts, including everything before 2020, is not the act of someone who stands by what she said.
The Rogers campaign, a Republican rival, was less diplomatic. Rogers spokeswoman Alyssa Brouillet said: "If Mallory is that homesick for California, she's better off to go home and run for office there."
The most damaging responses came from inside McMorrow's own party. Rep. Haley Stevens, a fellow Democrat also running for the Michigan Senate seat, posted a lengthy thread on X that took what Fox News Digital described as thinly veiled shots at McMorrow:
"I'm a born and raised Michigander and d*** proud of it. I love everything that makes us Michiganders, from our manufacturing heritage to our lakes and yep, even our accent. That's why I have pretty thick skin about people making fun of the way I talk or the clothes I wear, because this campaign isn't about me."
Stevens continued: "It's about the amazing people who live in this state. About them having a real champion in the Senate. So what actually ticks me off, someone who wants that job, representing Michiganders, talking crap about us and our state."
Another Democratic primary candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, posted a photo of himself with the caption: "Born in Michigan, hallelujah. Raised in Michigan, hallelujah. Believe cars should exist, hallelujah." That last line was a pointed reference to McMorrow's deleted "Cars are dead" post, a risky sentiment in the state that built the American auto industry.
When your own party rivals are defining themselves by how much they are not you, the damage is real. This is not a pattern unique to McMorrow; Michigan Democratic politics has long featured tensions between progressive ambition and the blue-collar identity the party claims to champion.
Ted Goodman, spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, framed the posts as confirmation of a broader trend:
"Mallory McMorrow just revealed her deep disdain for Middle America, which is exactly in line with where the Democrat Party has been trending for decades. McMorrow and today's Democrat Party abandoned hardworking families across Middle-America decades ago, and these deleted tweets only reaffirm this fact."
Chris Gustafson, a spokesperson for the Senate Leadership Fund and One Nation, posted on X: "The death of a campaign, brought to you, by, the campaign." The Republican National Committee's research arm also weighed in with criticism on social media.
Conservative radio host Andrew Wilkow summed up the sentiment many on the right share: "As I've told you the 'elites' hate your guts if you are culturally in the space between West of the George Washington Bridge and East of the Golden Gate Bridge."
Parker Thayer, an investigative researcher at the Capital Research Center, added a Michigan-specific warning: "One of my greatest fears for my home state is the Traverse-City-ification of the great Up North. Coastal libs like Buttigieg and McMorrow have realized how beautiful it is here, and they've decided they can tolerate our 'backwards' midwestern ways if they balkanize the state."
The broader pattern of Democrats facing consequences for conduct that contradicts their public image is not lost on voters who have watched one politician after another say one thing and do another.
McMorrow's predicament is straightforward. She moved to Michigan from California, spent years publicly wishing she hadn't, fantasized about the country splitting along coastal-versus-heartland lines, compared her political opponents to Nazis, and then, when she decided she wanted a promotion, tried to erase the evidence. The internet, as usual, had other plans.
The campaign's "normal person" defense misses the point entirely. The issue is not whether a candidate is allowed to complain about winter. The issue is whether a candidate who privately viewed Middle America as the lesser half of a national divorce can credibly claim to fight for the people who live there.
Michigan voters will decide that for themselves. But they deserve to make that decision with the full record in front of them, not the sanitized version McMorrow tried to leave behind.
If you have to delete 6,000 posts before asking people for their vote, maybe the problem isn't the posts.
