Misreporting Raises Questions About McMorrow’s Q1 Fundraising Report, Including Cash-On-Hand
Defend the Vote has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) asking for an investigation into Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow.
The complaint states that McMorrow 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. Under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, it is illegal to fail to disclose campaign expenditures over $200 made in the required reporting time period.
As the complaint lays out: “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. 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.”
Click here to read the full complaint
“Mallory McMorrow has said that we need to fix our campaign finance system and increase transparency. That applies to her too,” said Brian Lemek, Executive Director of Defend the Vote. “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. McMorrow spent over half a million dollars on ads that her campaign says she paid for–Michiganders deserve to see that transparency on her FEC report.”
In the complaint:
- In Q1, McMorrow only listed one expense for digital advertising for $100K, despite public reporting from multiple sources that show she paid at least $633K in ads during the same time period.
- McMorrow only listed one disbursement for Digital Advertising in her Q1 report to Authentic Campaigns for $100,000.
- McMorrow listed an additional $18K expense on digital fundraising consulting paid to the same firm.
- An independent data journalist repeatedly noted that McMorrow spent $633K on Meta ads in Q1 of 2026.
- A review of ads in the Meta Ad Library for McMorrow shows that in the first three months of 2026, McMorrow spent between $631.8K-$773.9K on advertising.
The discrepancy between the public reporting on her paid digital advertising and what her campaign disclosed in the Q1 FEC report raises questions about the veracity of the report that was filed, including the campaign’s stated cash-on-hand amount.