This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio.

My guest today is a state senator representing Michigan's eighth district and is a candidate for the United States Senate in twenty twenty six.

Mallory mcmurrow currently serves as the Michigan Senate majority whip and as the first woman in history to hold that position.

Perhaps best known for her viral twenty twenty two Senate speech, mcmurrow has accomplished a great deal in her short tenure in office.

People who are different are not the reason that our roads are in bad shape after decades of disinvestment, or that healthcare costs are too high, or that teachers are leaving the profession.

I want every child in this state to feel seen, heard, and supported, not marginalized and targeted because they are not straight, white and Christian.

Most notably, she has worked to strengthen Michigan unions and raise wages.

She eliminated the retirement tax on seniors, we peeled the state's abortion ban, expanded free community college, and secured investments for public transit and public schools.

With all of this under her belt, as a state senator.

I was curious what McMurrough thinks Michigan voters expect of her when they return to the polls in twenty twenty six to cast their ballots for United States Senator.

Voters are voting for sanity, and they are voting for somebody who cares and who lives what they live.

I'm a mom of a four year old.

I am concerned about her future and making sure that she has everything she needs, that her water is clean, that her schools are well funded, and pretty basic basic stuff.

Just sanity and decency.

Right, There's so many things that are common sense that we're missing right now that are just to protect water.

People think of the environmentalism that is a hallmark of this country since the seventies.

We might not have the enforcement we want, but we have the laws on the books.

They think that that's radical.

You know, do you do you agree?

I mean, I know you're from Michigan.

No, it's not radical to want clean air and clean water.

I mean watching this administration is going to roll back regulations on asbestos.

These are, to your point, common sense, basic things so that we can live longer, so we can enjoy our families longer.

It shouldn't be controversial at all.

You're from Michigan and I've worked with a couple of groups about Flint related water issues and worked on documentaries about Flint and what happened there, which was just so mind blowing because there were people guilty on both sides of the aisle.

Democrats and Republicans are responsible for that.

Is that still an important issue in that community there?

Do you know?

Do they still struggle with water issues there?

Yeah?

I was in Flint yesterday.

We just kicked off a statewide brewery tour, so we're meeting people and breweries all across the state.

And as you can imagine, clean water is important for making good beer too, But it's going to be an entire generation that really struggles.

I'm very good friends with doctor Mona Hanna, who was the Flint whistleblower.

She was the pediatrician who started seeing how unhealthy kids were in Flint and started raising red flags.

And even if the water is clean now, because we have accelerated making sure that all of the lines are replaced, that when you turn on the tap there's clean water coming out, you can't reverse the damage that has been done to kids' health, but also community trust is broken and that is going to take many, many years to get back.

You were born in New Jersey, it was, and how did the Michigan get into your life?

How did that happen?

So?

I was born and raised in rural New Jersey, Central Jersey.

I don't know what exit, which is a terrible joke that I hate anytime anybody asks.

I was there until I went to college, and then I went to the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, which is about ten minutes from the Michigan border.

But I've lived all over the country.

So I lived in New Jersey, Indiana, Southern California, New York, southern California, and then Michigan's.

Your dad military or something?

No, I just I'm a millennial.

I couldn't get a job after graduating into the recession.

My husband is a born and raised Michigander.

But what brought us back to Michigan was friends of mine started a road rally around Michigan.

It was a guy who worked for Google and another guy who started a website called Texts from Last Night that was a big thing in the early oughts, and they just had this idea of what if we invited thirty creative professionals from all across the country to Michigan, picked up a bunch of cars in Detroit, drove a thousand miles around the state a different route every year, brought an up and coming chef with us, and just showed it off.

And that was my vacation every year for five years.

And I fell in love with Michigan more than any other place I've ever lived, and I chose to move us back.

My husband actually didn't want to come.

He didn't want to be closer.

No, I didn't want to come home, my.

Mad your husband want to live.

Let's just get that on the record.

Where did he want to go?

I mean we were building a life between New York and southern California.

He was the editor in chief of Jelopnik for seven years and then basically the publisher at Gawker Media.

I was the creative director for Gawker Media at one point in my life.

You were with them for how long?

Just one year?

And I swear it took ten years off of my life, right, But you.

Would know you've had a very varied You graduated from Notre Dame with a degree in what kind of engineering?

Industrial design?

So I was the mix of art and engineering.

You worked on the hot Wheels cars?

I sure did, Yes, I did.

Can you believe that?

I can't believe that?

I was a senior designer over global branding and licensing for hot Wheels.

So there is a hot Wheels car that has my name on it, and that is my crowning achievement.

You have to get a big model that in your office in Washington.

Oh yeah, Now back to politics here.

You know, when I was younger, everybody wanted to go to Washington.

Rather they thought about that.

I went to gw everybody was political.

And then as I got older, I thought, I mean, you know, the Congress is so dysfunctional, it's so painful, it's so not even unproductive, it's counterproductive.

You go down there and you're in the Senate, presumably you win.

What's the three things you really want to try to get done?

Initially, I mean so many things.

So if I get elected.

When I get elected, I would be one of the only moms of a young child in the Senate.

So thinking about how many missed opportunities there have been for working parents.

We need universal paid leave in this country.

We need access to universal childcare and clean water.

That's my third thing for Michigan.

We have to and you're going to go down There was a mom and what's the legislative agenda you see is important for you in terms.

Of motherhood basic things.

I just want to pose this.

I know you have seven kids, but for most working parents, the average work day ends at five, but the school day and it too.

And there are so many people who can't participate in the economy just because we haven't built an economy for parents.

And then you've got people like Elon Musk out there trying to I guess buy as many pregnancies as you possibly can, but you wonder about why is there a declining birth rate and why aren't millennials starting families.

And when I talk to people in my generation, what I hear is overwhelmingly I've done everything right and I'm still getting screwed.

I went to college, I tried to get a job.

I can't afford to buy a house, I can't afford to start a family.

None of it adds up.

So thinking about even small things about productivity gains have increased significantly over the last few decades.

Why are we still holding on to very traditional, outdated ways of working.

And then how do we make sure we have universal paid leave, How do we make sure we have universal childcare in a way that every other developed nation in the world has except the United States.

Let's say you want, you're all going to head down there and live down there together.

Well, it's only an our flight between Michigan and DC, which is nice.

I know that.

You know, of the few parents in the Senate, Chris Murphy has kids, Andy Kim has kids, they do it different ways.

My daughter so far, she she loves being on a plane a couple of times.

But my husband on Delta, they've got great cookies.

Oh of course Detroita's Delta hubs, so she's got to get the cookies.

But no, my husband was working out of state for about a year and a half, so in a way she got used to already having a routine where one of us is home, one of us is not.

We trade off and on, and then you know, weekends and days off.

That's time that she really loves with us.

So we are I think, uniquely prepared for this, and we'll do whatever's best for her.

I mean, that's the most important thing.

Where is she going to have the best opportunity, where is she going to be happiest.

And she's building a great life here at home.

So it's a quick flight.

Yeah, you do a lot of flying.

Yeah.

Carl Levin, the great Carl Levin was office for six terms, I believe thirty six years.

I was a huge admirer of his.

Describe to me the ramp up to this election.

Now for you, you were doing what before you ran for office.

So I am a state senator.

This is my second term.

We have term limits in Michigan.

I would be eligible for one.

More, so you will have served eight years when you were.

Done eight years.

Yeah, I'm in my seventh year.

Carl Levin, I think, is a great example.

He's somebody who went from Detroit City Council to the United States Senate.

Wow, there's something really incredible about bringing that local knowledge to Washington in a way where you're not compromised by all of the kind of pushes and pulls of DC.

You're not trapped in DC for a long time.

You are deeply connected to the roots back home.

I am currently a state Senator.

I ran for office for the first time in twenty eighteen.

I googled how to run for office after the twenty sixteen election, and I came into the minority.

The Senate here in Michigan and had been controlled by Republicans since nineteen eighty four, and I languished in the minority.

We weren't allowed to pass any legislation.

I started a state pack, I raised millions of dollars.

I helped support a dozen state Senate candidates around the state, and we helped flip control of the state Senate for the first time since nineteen eighty four.

So I am now the Senate majority whip.

I am the first woman to ever hold that position in the first Democrat in forty years, and I believe that makes me uniquely qualified to take on this campaign because I think Washington needs to be a hell of a lot more like Michigan and not the other way around.

Who's your predecessor.

Who's leaving office?

Gary Peters is retiring.

We now have two cycles in Michigan in a row.

There have been two open Senate seats in just the last couple of years.

Debbie Stabenow retired last cycle, and then alyssa' Slockin ran for office in one and this cycle, Gary Peters announced he is going to retire, and I think that is an incredible model that our state is leading, where you can work tirelessly and recognize that as a state we have built up a really good bench of Democratic candidates and that you should have a well earned retirement.

Gary just has his first grandchild.

How many terms did he serve too?

He was in Congress before that and then the state legislature and he was the lottery commissioner for a while, so he's been in and around politics for a good long time.

They did twelve years in the Senate.

Yeah.

But what you're saying that the bench is deep there with competent Democratic candidates, very deep.

Yeah.

We have done a lot of work here in Michigan to grow our ranks and it's time now.

When you go down there a lot of mature people, shall we say a lot of older people, You're going to be like their daughter.

They've got daughters your age, many of them.

Do you think you're going to get some kind of special treatment because you're so young and your lack of experience in terms of federal politics.

I mean, I'm used to people underestimating me.

I ran in twenty eighteen against my republic An incumbent state senator who had won previously by sixteen points, and even local Democrats said, that's cute.

You're going to get destroyed.

And there was something really freeing about not necessarily having the backing of the party and being able to come in and just say, let's just go for it and try to run a campaign to really connect with people in a way that feels different.

We had more than five hundred volunteers and I beat them by four points.

That's a twenty point swing in one cycle.

And now I'm in leadership.

You know, I'm responsible for an eighty billion dollars state budget.

I'm on seven committees.

I'm the chair of the Economic and Community Development Committee.

I'm the vice chair of the Oversight Committee.

I've proven that I'm a workhourse and I do really well when people underestimate me.

I still drive American cars.

What's your favorite?

I got seven kids, so Cadillac Escalate very roomy.

Yeah, I need a lot of room.

My husband proposed to me with a twenty fourteen Cadillac CTSV wagon with eight hundred horsepower in a manual transmission.

You're kidding me?

You were in that or he gave it to you as an engaged That was that was that was the engagement that was engaged to marry me.

You were in it.

Well, he showed me this car.

It was parked on the street in front of our favorite restaurant, and he gets down on one knee and he's just looking at the car.

I was so confused as to what happened.

And that was the box for the ring.

So it was the car in the ring.

Thank god.

That's so cool.

You love cars.

You're a car nut.

What do you drive currently?

I drive a Chevy bolt UV, the slightly larger one.

I commute back and forth to Lansing, so it's one hundred and seventy miles round trip every three days a week.

The election is until next year, that's right.

You have a whole year and a half to go.

The primary is in August.

You have you to describe your opponent in the primary.

This is right now, a four way primary.

So it is myself, Congresswoman Haley Stevens abdul lsa ed who ran for governor in twenty eighteen against Gretchen Whitmer and Joe Tait, who was the speaker of the state.

House and who's your threat?

So we knew coming in that I would likely have lower name recognition because I am a state legislator.

We got our first internal pulling back that shows that it's already close to neck and neck.

The leading candidate is Hailey Stevens, member of Congress.

She has been on TV all over Metro Detroit with millions of dollars of ads the last few cycles.

Then Abdul lsa Ed is a little more well known than I am because he's already run statewide.

But we dug in deeper and of voters who know both myself and the congresswoman.

I'm beating her by twenty three points, so we feel really good.

We just have to get out and meet everybody, which is why I announced so early.

People are looking for change and something that feels fresh and outside of Washington and somebody who's going to fight and is as angry about this moment as they are.

Michigan State Senator Mallory mcmurrow.

If you enjoy conversations about politics and women running for office in twenty twenty six, check out my episode with California Representative Katie Porter.

You know, I think there is an attitude that you know, sort of people are entitled to have Republican representation.

Here.

What they're entitled to is good representation, right, people who listen to them, people who fight for them, people who are not corrupt, and that can come in your Democratic or Republican forms.

To hear my conversation with Katie Porter, go to Here's the Thing dot org.

After the break, Mallory mcmurroe talks about the safety risk of being a politician and the public eye and not letting fear win.

I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.

Mallory mcmurrow is not only a Michigan State senator, she is currently a candidate in the twenty twenty six mid term election for the United States Senate.

I was curious about how mcmurrow felt about the prospect of serving in Washington, DC at such a critical time and what concerns her the most.

I mean, I'm really concerned about just the moment that we're in.

You know, we're talking now only a few days after the Minnesota Speaker of the House, Melissa Hortman, was murdered by you know, a man who had made a list and made a police car and just just terrifying this moment, that that was very premeditative, very premeditated, and deep concerns about mental health and so much of went into that.

And my fear is that people see all of that happening and just check out that they say, none of this matters.

I'm not going to participate.

And my hope is I want to run a very very different campaign that is aggressive on messaging.

I'm very active on social media.

We are doing this brewery tour.

We're looking at you know, can I show up at dirt track races and just get to know people who don't talk to politicians?

And how do we keep that going once we went and getting to Washington, And what's.

That specific thing like in Michigan, for example, Because in New York, in New York politics and that retail politics is very specific and very you know, it changes a little bit, not much.

You got to go out to the outer borroughs and eat the hot dogs and hug the babies, and it's very very retail and very hands on.

What's it like in Michigan is like when you said they don't want to meet the politicians of the dirt track race or they do.

It has become very routine.

Michigan is a battleground state.

So what happens every election cycle is it's not even just the candidates who are running, but it's every national organization and reporter parachutes into Michigan and it's NonStop at everybody's doorstep and doing all these town halls and showing up in churches.

And then everybody leaves, which I think magnifies the experience that you described, because it's not only just the candidates leave, it's that entire apparatus that descended on Michigan goes away.

So for us, I recognize that right now, fourteen months before the primary election, this is not the time where people are going to want to come out to town halls and be lectured about policy.

So we just had our first four stops of our brewery tour.

Over the last two days.

We were in four counties, were driving around and we just invited people, Hey, I'm not going to lecture you, just come grab a beer, get to know me, tell me what keeps you up at night, and we'll ask questions.

And we did open questions and I saw so many people who come out who would not come to democratic clubs, not come to town halls.

We had families and grandparents.

What I loved about this was because it wasn't rows of chairs that we usually see at events.

People were getting to know each other and asking why they had come, and people were having a really good time.

And if we can start to build relationships like that where we do events that feel very different, but we maintain that relationship not only throughout the campaign.

But that's a promise that I'm making now, is you elect me, and we are going to continue to do things like this to maintain a relationship with you, because Michiganders feel like politics is transactional.

To your point, you show up right around election time, everybody descends, and then you go away and we never hear from you.

And that constant invocation by people who say, well, remember one thing, it'll be a lot worse if my opponent wins.

Right, It can't all just be about fear.

People are walking on eggshells.

Hey, people don't want to talk.

To each other.

Well, they were in so much pain.

You're a woman, and you mentioned about that relationship as a parent is something that's vital.

I think to myself when you send money to a state from the federal government, which they are all pulling the plug on.

Now, when you send money to a state for parents to help raise their children, that's a twofer.

You're helping two people.

You're helping two constituents.

With every doublo, it's meant there that woman who is the mother, because the mother is the primary thing.

In my book, obviously we have to focus on families.

And I'm a Democrat, I'm a liberal Democrat, but I'm saying to myself, we got to pump as much money as possible and to making sure that you can go to work if you want to, and those kids are taken care of and you can work, you know, undistracted.

And that if you want to stay home with your kids, you can do whatever you want to do.

Yeah, you can't afford it.

Well, I also just on that point, I am probably part of the last generation that has experienced a time before the Internet.

Like I vividly remember when we got my first home computer.

It was a Gateway two thousand.

It took up a whole room.

It was a box cow.

It did the boxes cow, and the internet was a physical place we went and you'd fight I'm one of four, so I had to fight my siblings for it, and you got twenty minutes and then you were trying to download a song and then your mom picks up a phone and then you're mad at her.

But we have such a responsibility, and this is again something that as a senator we have to fix is social media companies and tech companies.

The products are designed to be addictive and you can't disconnect, and that is not a way to live.

And it's not to say that people shouldn't pay attention to what's going on, but we have to learn how to reconnect with each other in real life and step away for a little bit so we stop hating each other.

We were talking before about the state senator that was killed and the horror of the Do you ever fear for your safety?

I do, I really do.

We had a protest here in Michigan on April thirtieth of twenty twenty, well before January sixth, and there's a photo that went viral.

There are four men in the gallery with full tactical gear invests in AR fifteen's and what you don't see in that photo is right below them was me.

And this is the state where there was the plot to kidnap and kill Gretchen Witmer, and you know there were also plans to carry out public executions on the capitol steps.

It is devastating to have to think about, you know.

I also, yes, I'm in this because I want a better life for my daughter, and I also have to think through I have to make sure that I'm not putting her life at risk.

But I also know it is much harder to put your name on a ballot and be vulnerable and allow people to judge you and say every horrible thing about you that there is to say on the internet and lay out a vision for a future and ask people to trust you with their vote than it is to threaten violence.

I just go back to we can't let people like this win win, Let the fear win, you know, let people be pushed out.

And we've seen a exodus of clerks and election workers and you know, just good people who are trying to do a good job who didn't sign up for this.

Nobody signed up for this, And we have to get back to what we said at the top, just sanity and common sense, where we can disagree with each other without worrying that somebody's going to take that as a sign to attack you in a really dangerous way.

How does the gun issue play in that state.

I would imagine in a state that's very urban and then very rural and everything in between.

Is it a big pro gun voters there?

I mean, yes, we are.

This is a state where we have hunting break in the legislature.

We shut down for two weeks at the start of hunting season.

And I grew up in you know, a rural small town.

We had guns in my house.

This is this was normal.

But this is also a state that has been devastated by gun violence.

We had the Oxford High School shooting here in Michigan, and there were kids who I met who had survived that who decided to go to Michigan State to stay closer to home because they were still traumatized, only to survive another school shooting a few months later.

I'm somebody.

I lost a friend of mine who was killed in the Virginia Tech shooting.

So we have passed in Michigan, universal background checks, safe storage, We closed the domestic violence loophole.

My first bill ever signed into law created Michigan's Red Flag law.

And I have to tell you.

I mean, we polled for some of the bills that we passed, and on universal background checks and safe storage, it was over ninety percent of Republican gun owners supported this legislation.

So there's a real if we can bring people together to say, to protect the Second Amendment and your right to own guns and go out hunting and everything you want to do, we have to pass legislation that keeps everybody safe.

It just in the last two days alone, we've had a shooting at a church and then a shooting in royal Oktown, which is part of my district, right just overnight in a park.

It's strange to think that in the modern world that's a factor for people that you're going to get shot somewhere in public.

It is, Yeah, what do you think you need to say to Republicans to embrace you, because it would be helpful if you could get a few of their votes too.

Well.

I wouldn't be in office if Republicans didn't vote for me.

I mean, I flipped a Republican district.

There are universal values that we all share, and at the end of the day, you want to know that government works for you.

It has to be functional.

It has to be saying we have to acknowledge that some programs don't work, and we do require oversight.

We have to be fiscally responsible, and we just got to get out of chaos.

One of my closest friends and colleagues is a guy named Senator John Demouse.

He's a conservative Republican from northern Michigan.

He and I are working on legislation to effectively modernize our state's economy so that we support more agriculture and small businesses and tourism and startups are not so uniquely tied to the auto industry.

He's also somebody who he used to work for a commercial production company, so he's talked about Michigan having film tax credits in a way that we don't before.

So how do we expand our economy?

And what do you think about as a person who's in the entertainment business, tell me what you think about tax credits for the film industry.

I think like Michigan does way too often.

We didn't allow it enough time to succeed.

I have become pretty good friends with Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson, who they created Detroiters, and now there's I think you should leave and Sam was on VEEP and they did a virtual fundraiser for me a couple of years ago.

It was a Detroiter's reunion, which people here really loved, and they said, very candidly, you know, we sold this show to Comedy Central when the film credits still existed, and we couldn't make it today just because no more film credits.

We change of administration.

It was something under Governor Granholm, who was a Democrat.

She passed it and then Rick Snyder, Republican, came in and eliminated them, and we saw, you know, an industry was starting to grow and it just collapsed.

And there are a lot of young people, especially who may not love cars the way that I love cars and don't necessarily want to work in the auto industry, but they want to make movies.

And we have to diversify our economy and forst stale like cars.

I mean, we have everything.

We have every location.

We have Detroit, we have outdoors, we have ranches, we have farms, We've got you know, urban suburban environments.

We have every location you could possibly want to shoot anything in.

We just need to allow it industry to grow.

They got rid of it here because the Republicans framed it as as handouts to Hollywood elites and completely missed you know, the local crew, the local talent, the people, high paying jobs for the local crew, high paying jobs.

You know, we have had a really strong advertising industry related to the automotive industry because it's all right here, so we have advertising agencies, but that business has declined, and we do have a lot of young people who want to get into production and media and content and telling stories and have nowhere to go and ultimately leave the state.

Are you hopeful, if not counting on the Senate flipping next year in time for your arrival.

It would be so nice if it did.

That would make things a lot easier.

I am under no fallse ilution that that is a likely outcome.

I feel much more confident that the House flips and that the Senate, just given the map, stays under Republican control, although narrow, which is why a part of my pitch is that I've already done this on the state level.

I got elected, I came into the minority, I built up a political operation to support other candidates to help us take back power, and I can do the same thing in the United States.

Senate Gary Peters, our retiring senator, was the chair of the d SC last cycle.

So that's shoes that I am hoping to fill.

Michigan State Senate whip Mallory mcmurrow.

If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

When we come back, mcmurroe talks about her concerns for Michigan's auto industry in the wake of Trump's tariff policies.

I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.

As Malorie mcmurroe continues her campaign for the United States Senate, I wanted to hear more about what she hopes to accomplish for her Michigan constituents if elected to serve in Washington.

So Michigan is the canary in the coal mine when we hit the recession, because we are so tied to the auto industry.

We went down first, we went down hardest, and it took us longer than any other state to recover.

Thinking about the tariff policy right now, what a lot of people don't realize is that a car may cross the border between Michigan and Canada two dozen times as it is being assembled and manufactured.

And if you've got a tariff being hit on that vehicle, your Cadillac two dozen times before it finally gets assembled, that car is now ten thousand dollars more expensive.

So getting to a place where we are reforming our economic policy so it's strategic, gets thoughtful.

This is also a state who was really badly hurt by NATO and globalization.

But the answer from this administration to put reciprocal tariffs on absolutely everything.

We're not about to grow bananas in Michigan.

But getting back to a place, you know, again, for us, for our economy, it's about sanity.

It's about bringing experts to the table, having a voice at the table, and putting forward policy that is not ready fire aim where you just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks and see what the backlash is.

And we need that.

You know, Michigan is currently one of the oldest states in the country.

We have more people getting ready to retire than we have young people coming into the workforce.

So that's going to be a big focus of mine, is how do we need to position our state, which is an affordable place to live, which is home of eighty five percent of the nation's fresh water in the Great Lakes.

Wow, a lot of stewardship involved in states like that with that water body, isn't it true?

Absolutely, we are starting to see people move to Michigan as effectively climate refugees.

People who can't get a homeowner's policy in California or Florida are now coming to Michigan.

So that is devastating just as a reality for the country, but it's an opportunity for Michigan, and from my stance, the next US Senator for Michigan has to help our state be prepared to accept people when they come here.

There are a lot of is it Minnesota or Michigan.

What is the one that has the huge population of Vietnamese refugees or is it Cambodian refugeuse I can't remember.

The Minnesota has hired.

We have a very diverse state.

We have a lot of Indian American immigrants.

Patty to India like neighbor of Pakistan India Oka.

Yes, correctly, I apologize as I'm listening now, I'm so high, I'm so hyper vigilant now every time I'm talking to something.

That's the walking on eggshells thing.

Yeah, exactly exactly.

I called somebody an actress the other day and they were glad to me, like, don't you call her an actress?

She's the actor like you, there's an actor now, no actress.

I'm like, oh god, okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Please don't cancel me.

We gotta stop.

Okay.

Can I just say, like, as a party, we need to stop canceling everybody.

We need we need to build a tent welcome people in.

If you accidentally say the wrong thing.

I mean you yourself have been the victim of that, correct.

I was, yeah, And because life is like an episode of TV, I was sexually harassed by a colleague during sexual harassment training.

No, seriously, he did he did it?

Yeah, it was a guy.

I detail it, go into detail in my book about it, and I wasn't going to say anything.

But then months later he did the same thing to a young reporter and I knew I could speak up, but we were taking a break from sexual harassment training and I walked over and I introduced myself and he said, who did you beat?

And I told him who My opponent was and at this point he was holding my hand.

He put his other hand around my body, basically on my ass, and looked me up and down and said, I can see why.

Okay, well, so I'm going to send you a suit of armor.

You can wear it to Washington, could go to serve the Senate every day.

Is that your daughter, by the way in the background.

Yeah, she just got home from school, a babysitter Hauser.

So there was a little voice, she's upstairs sown.

Now.

You just had a curiosity because I am a I lapsed and I come back, and I lapsed and I come back sometimes I'm back strong.

I'm a Catholic and you were raised a Catholic?

Sure was Is that why you went to Notre Dame?

Did you want to go to a Catholic college.

I didn't want to go to a Catholic college.

Truly.

We had a falling out with our church, if you will.

So my parents got divorced when I was seven.

And I read them about what they said about your mom.

Yeah, and my mom taught CCD, so you know, she was doing everything.

She volunteered at the church.

I was in the choir and it got to a place where there were a number of other things that went wrong, and the community that my mom was looking for was very clearly not there in my church.

So we left and I ended up at Notre Dame because there was a service aspect of Catholicism and the ethos of the school that I really liked.

I liked that all of our projects and our work were grounded in giving back to the community.

And it was much more chill to go to Mass in your pajamas in the dorm.

It felt a little more welcoming than the church usually.

Is so interesting how those people are emissaries for the faith itself and they just don't understand that role.

They really don't.

I mean, I had priests, you know.

I remember one time I said to this priest that other philosophies have anything they hold, any truths for you or any meaning to you.

And he goes and he had that classic long Island accent.

He's from the Island.

Oh, yes, of course, he said, yes, of course, he said.

Sometimes I think I think the Buddhists have something to say, the Hindus, the Jews, everything, I think everyone has cut some contribution.

He goes, Sometimes I just think that the Catholics have the best real estate to hang out in.

Oh well, that the accent.

By the way, my dad is from Long Island, so my grandma is from Hicksville.

No Billy Joelsh, Billy Joel's from here.

So exactly.

So my grandma still lives in Long Island, and she would watch every single Michigan Senate session.

She would stream it, and then she would call me on Fridays to debrief, and in the same accent, she would go, Mallory, those people talk way too much.

That other senator.

He never has anything good to say, and you never get to ask any questions.

And he needs to let you talk a little more, you know.

Can you tell him that.

I'm like, Okay, you.

Have a great New York accents.

It's great.

You should come here and run.

You'll pass.

You would pass.

Best of luck with the primary.

We need tough women.

We need more tough women.

If you talk about the issues and you keep jabbing with that, you got a good shot at winning.

You're very, very talented.

I appreciate it.

My thanks to Michigan State Senator Mallory mcmurrow.

You can learn more about her campaign at mcmurrow from Michigan dot Com.

This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City.

Were produced by Kathleen Brusso, Zach MacNeice, and Victoria De Martin.

Our engineer is Frank Imperial.

Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich.

I'm Alec Baldwin.

Here's the Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio one