State Sen. Mallory McMorrow has built her U.S. Senate campaign around a simple argument that speeches aren’t enough.
“Rhetoric is nice, but results are better,” McMorrow said in an April media interview, casting herself as the candidate best prepared to deliver on Democratic priorities.
But as the Royal Oak Democrat campaigns on her record in Lansing, legislative effectiveness rankings and attendance records complicate that message. The Center for Effective Lawmaking has consistently ranked McMorrow near the bottom of Senate Democrats in Michigan, and records show she has missed multiple session days and roll-call votes this year while campaigning for the U.S. Senate.
“Rhetoric is nice, but results are what matter,” Joetta Appiah, a spokesperson for rival U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens’s U.S. Senate campaign, tells Metro Times. “That’s why Haley is proud to be the most effective Michigan Democrat in Congress. She fights to get things done for Michigan, from standing up to Trump’s cost-raising tariffs to protecting Michigan’s manufacturers and jobs, and she’ll bring that same results-driven record to the U.S. Senate.”
According to a recent poll, in the three-way Democratic primary race, McMorrow is in a statistical dead heat with Stevens and former Wayne County health director Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive backed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
McMorrow’s campaign argues the effectiveness measures fail to capture much of what lawmakers do, especially those in leadership. McMorrow has served as Senate majority whip since Democrats took control of the chamber in January 2023, a role that placed her in the leadership ranks of Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, a Grand Rapids Democrat.
Brinks defended McMorrow’s record, saying she has been an important part of the caucus, even when her name was not attached to legislation.
“Mallory is a fighter for her constituents, an astute lawmaker, and a valued voice at my leadership table,” Brinks said. “Any legislator can introduce an easy bill and get it to the governor — it takes courage and grit to introduce and pass complex, powerful reforms that improve lives. That’s exactly what she did with our gun violence prevention initiatives. A couple of metrics cannot capture the amount of times she has helped make Michigan better because she’s willing to work on any issue, no matter whose name is on the bill. I think we should all agree that D.C. needs more people like Mallory who are in it for the greater good, not their own glory.”
The Center for Effective Lawmaking’s State Legislative Effectiveness Scores measure how successful lawmakers are at moving their own bills through the legislative process, factoring in how many bills they sponsor, how far those bills move through the process, and how significant the legislation is.
But the methodology has its limits. The Center for Effective Lawmaking cautions that its score is not a complete measure of legislative effectiveness. Its methodology does not count behind-the-scenes work to help other bills pass, party leadership work, or efforts to block opponents’ proposals.
Sure enough, other state legislative leaders, including Brinks and Republican Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt, ranked near the bottom of their respective caucuses under the same 2023-24 metric.
By the center’s measure, McMorrow ranked 15th out of 16 Senate Democrats in the 2019-20 legislative session, 16th out of 16 in 2021-22, and 18th out of 20 in 2023-24.
The rankings are politically useful for Stevens, a Birmingham Democrat who is also running for the Senate seat. The Center for Effective Lawmaking ranked Stevens as the most effective Democratic member of Congress from Michigan in the 118th Congress, and the same analysis found she was the most effective member of Congress on science and technology issues.
But the same data, viewed differently, can tell another story. McMorrow’s campaign said the senator passed more “substantive” and significant bills into law than Stevens, while the congresswoman passed more bills overall when commemorative measures, such as bills renaming federal buildings, are included.
During her time in the state Senate, McMorrow championed Michigan’s red flag law, which allows law enforcement, family members, and others to ask a judge to temporarily remove firearms from people believed to pose a threat to themselves or others. She also worked on successful legislation involving economic development, ballot tracking, child care center safety locks, legacy license plates, and permanent takeout cocktails.
Since Democrats took control of the state House and Senate in the November 2022 election, McMorrow has also voted for a sweeping agenda that expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit, repealed the retirement tax on seniors, increased school funding, funded universal school meals, expanded voting rights, strengthened LGBTQ protections, repealed right-to-work, restored prevailing wage, passed gun safety laws, codified Affordable Care Act protections, and approved clean energy legislation.
McMorrow’s campaign says she helped advance those bills as part of the Senate Democratic majority, even when her name wasn’t on the legislation.
“Mallory McMorrow has been more effective, passing more substantive bills than Haley Stevens,” Hannah Lindow, a spokesperson for McMorrow’s campaign, tells Metro Times. “And the stats Stevens points to back that up.”
The attendance records further complicate McMorrow’s argument about effectiveness.
As of April 2026, McMorrow had missed eight days of Senate session votes and 18 roll-call votes on the Senate floor this year. Several of the absences coincided with campaign activity.
On Feb. 4, when McMorrow was excused from the session, she appeared in a livestream promoting her U.S. Senate campaign from her home in Royal Oak. On Feb. 11, she was in Washington, D.C., participating in the UAW Candidates Forum. On March 3, the same day she was excused from the session, McMorrow posted an Instagram video from the campaign trail explaining that she was not a progressive but a pragmatist.
On March 18, McMorrow was excused from another session and missed 14 roll-call votes. That same day, she posted a video from the campaign trail. The next day, she was excused again and missed three roll-call votes.
One of the March 19 votes was on Senate Bill 502, which updated Michigan’s anti-terrorism law after a court ruling threatened to weaken it. The bill came after Jewish elected officials, including Attorney General Dana Nessel, urged action following the attack at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield.
McMorrow’s campaign said her absence did not affect the outcome because SB 502 passed unanimously.
Stevens’s campaign argues the attendance comparison favors Stevens, who has missed a total of eight votes since joining Congress in 2019, while McMorrow missed 18 roll-call votes in the first months of 2026 alone. Last year, the Center for Effective Lawmaking ranked Stevens as the most effective Democratic House member from Michigan.
But Stevens has also missed votes in Congress, including measures related to drunk-driving-related deportations, controlled substance licensing, veterans’ entrepreneurship training, and SNAP benefits. But those missed votes are much less frequent than McMorrow’s.
McMorrow also missed committee work. On March 26, she canceled a meeting of the Senate Committee on Economic and Community Development, which she chairs, and it has not met since Nov. 13. That day, McMorrow was at a fundraiser in Buchanan and hosted a virtual meet-up with recurring donors.
On April 16, McMorrow was excused from session, missed one roll-call vote, and missed an Appropriations Committee meeting that included budget items for state departments, public universities, and community colleges. That same day, she attended two campaign events in the metro Detroit suburbs. On April 23, she missed another Appropriations Committee meeting involving funding discussions for the Department of Education, Michigan State Police, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Corrections, the general government budget and state colleges and universities.
In April 2025, McMorrow said elected officials have an obligation to show up.
“Even if it’s not going my way, people elected me to be their senator, so I have to show up,” McMorrow said in a podcast interview.
