Chris Murphy may be the youngest senator, but he enters with six years of congressional experience already under his belt.
Elected to the House in 2006, then-Congressman Murphy spent three terms focusing on health-care reform and domestic manufacturing. He supported President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, fought for the end of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on gays serving openly in the military, and advocated for the end of the Defense of Marriage Act. To promote US manufacturing, Murphy founded the Buy American Caucus, a bipartisan group that advocates for creating incentives for companies that keep jobs in the United States.
Most recently, he was a member of the Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Government Reform committees.
Murphy replaces retiring Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat turned independent, who served four terms. He defeated Linda McMahon, a former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, by 12 percentage points even though Ms. McMahon outspent him three to one on TV ads. McMahon had spent $42.6 million by the end of October, much of it from her personal wealth, reported the National Journal. She called Murphy a career politician, and criticized his personal financial management.
He spent four years in the Connecticut state Senate, where he served as chairman of the public health committee. He helped pass a workplace smoking ban and created the state’s Stem Cell Investment Act, which allotted $100 million over 10 years for embryonic and adult stem cell research.
Murphy graduated from University of Connecticut School of Law in 2002 and practiced real estate and banking law while serving in the state Senate. Previously he served four years in the state House, beginning in 1998.
The Senate Democratic leadership assigned Murphy to three committees: Joint Economic; Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP); and Foreign Relations.
Another issue that will be on Senator Murphy’s agenda: gun control.
A few days after the Dec. 14 tragedy in Newtown, Conn., Murphy and fellow Sen. Richard Blumenthal attended a Newtown United meeting where citizens gathered to discuss what they could do to prevent mass shootings. They told the attendees that they planned to push for gun control legislation.
The framework for the legislation has not yet been defined, but Murphy disagrees with the National Rifle Association’s approach.
“The NRA has now made itself completely irrelevant to the national conversation about preventing gun violence, by saying that the answer to the tragedy in Newtown is to put more deadly semi-automatic assault weapons on the streets and into our schools,” he told NewtownPatch.
