Mallory McMorrow Wants Power—and Yes, That Is a Good Thing

They were wed in 2017. Although they lived in both Los Angeles and New York, both said McMorrow urged them to settle down in Michigan, Wert’s home state, where he now works as vice-president for communications and marketing for Radiant Nuclear, a company that builds micro reactors. Among other things, McMorrow said she was charmed by the state when she and her husband visited it each summer, joining fellow travelers for 1,000-mile road rallies around The Mitten. They bought a house in Royal Oak, a suburb north of Detroit, to raise their daughter, Noa.

That name is Israeli, McMorrow said, and her husband is Jewish. She acknowledged the irony of living in a suburb famously remembered as home of “The Radio Priest,” Father Charles Coughlin, who preached anti-Semitism over the air to a national audience in the 1930s. Back then, McMorrow said, she and Wert probably could not have bought a home in Royal Oak because of their mixed marriage. Now, she said, they observe both Passover and Easter and teach their daughter to be open-minded.

“I was very nervous for many years to talk about my religious upbringing,” McMorrow said. “My relationship with Catholicism is complicated, like a lot of people’s is. On top of that, I’m married to a Jewish man. But I realized when we don’t talk about it, we leave the vacuum for Republicans to really have a monopoly on religion.”