A top Democratic Party candidate running for a Senate seat in Michigan is facing accusations that she hid half a million dollars in campaign spending, according to information contained in a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint that was filed by a Democrat-aligned political action committee known as Defend the Vote (DTV).
Michigan Democratic state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who is currently considered to be the leading contender for the party’s U.S. Senate nomination in the state, failed to disclose over $500,000 “of campaign expenditures on paid fundraising ads that ran on Meta platforms in her FEC report filed for the first quarter of 2026,” according to a press release put out by DTV addressing the complaint.
“State Sen. Mallory McMorrow’s campaign has placed up to $773,904 of advertising on the platform Meta without disclosing sufficient payments made for the advertising or debt owed to cover the advertising costs,” the complaint goes on to say. “This glaring error in her public reports raises serious questions about her compliance with the Act’s reporting requirements”
“Worse, it raises reason to believe a corporate vendor may have illegally fronted those advertising costs for her campaign to inflate her reported cash on hand on filing day,” the release continued, according to The Daily Caller. The PAC’s complaint alleges McMorrow only disclosed a digital advertising spend of $100,000, despite data showing her campaign spent a total of $631,000 during its first quarter.
DTV said that the Senate candidate’s campaign stated that its $100,000 disbursement was set aside for its digital ad vendor, Authentic Campaigns, while an additional $18,000 was then paid to the same firm for “digital fundraising consulting.” A review of the Meta Ad Library shows that the McMorrow campaign ad spend was between $631,800 to $773,904 for the first three months of 2026.
The PAC also cited a piece of reporting from Andrew Arenge, who serves as the director of operations for the University of Pennsylvania’s Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies (PORE), which said that McMorrow did in fact spend $633,000 on digital ads thus far in 2026. Brian Lemek, DTV’s executive director, put out a statement addressing the situation with McMorrow.
“Mallory McMorrow has said that we need to fix our campaign finance system and increase transparency. That applies to her too,” he went on to say. “That means fully disclosing all the payments her campaign made as required on her FEC report, not hiding over $500,000 worth of ads she spent money on.” The PAC also alleges that the discrepancy in McMorrow’s campaign spending on digital ads raises serious concerns about whether their claimed cash-on-hand is accurate.
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During the first quarter of 2026, McMorrow’s campaign managed to raise north of $3 million. The two other Democratic individuals in the running for the Senate seat, which includes former Wayne County health director Abdul El-Sayed and Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, have raised $2.3 million and $2 million for their campaigns. Polling conducted by Emerson shows that McMorrow and El-Sayed are tied at 24% with primary voters, with Stevens coming in behind them with a total of 13% support from likely primary voters.