62 Facts About Chris Murphy

1.

Christopher Scott Murphy was born on August 3,1973 and is an American lawyer, author, and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Connecticut since 2013.

2.

Chris Murphy ran for the US Senate in 2012 after long-time incumbent Joe Lieberman announced in January 2011 that he would retire from politics rather than seeking a fifth term in office.

3.

Chris Murphy defeated former Connecticut secretary of state Susan Bysiewicz in the Democratic primary, and subsequently defeated Republican candidate Linda McMahon for the open seat in the general election.

4.

Aged 39 at the time, Chris Murphy was the youngest senator of the 113th Congress.

5.

Chris Murphy has two younger siblings, a sister, Susannah, and a brother, Ben.

6.

On May 19,2013, Chris Murphy received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the University of New Haven.

7.

In 1996, Chris Murphy was campaign manager for Charlotte Koskoff's unsuccessful campaign for the House against Nancy Johnson; a decade later, Chris Murphy himself would unseat Johnson.

8.

From 1997 to 1998, Chris Murphy worked for Connecticut State Senate Majority Leader George Jepsen.

9.

Chris Murphy was first elected to office in 1997, when he won a seat on the Planning and Zoning Commission in Southington.

10.

In 1998, at age 25, Chris Murphy challenged 14-year incumbent Republican State Representative Angelo Fusco.

11.

Chris Murphy was endorsed by the six largest labor unions in the state.

12.

Chris Murphy proposed legislation that would give free tuition to students of the state's community-technical colleges.

13.

Chris Murphy proposed legislation that would ban smoking in state colleges and universities.

14.

Chris Murphy co-sponsored a bill that would create an earned income tax credit.

15.

Chris Murphy was a supporter of rights for LGBTQIA+ people as early as 2002.

16.

In 2004, Chris Murphy supported a bill that would ban smoking in all restaurants and bars.

17.

In 2005, Chris Murphy authored legislation establishing the new Office of Child Protection, to "better coordinate advocacy for abused and neglected children".

18.

Chris Murphy chose not to run for re-election to the State Senate, targeting instead the US House seat held by 12-term incumbent Republican Nancy Johnson.

19.

Chris Murphy carried 35 of the district's 41 cities and towns, including several that had reliably supported Johnson for decades.

20.

Chris Murphy defeated Johnson by a significant margin in her hometown of New Britain, which she had represented for over 30 years in both the state senate and in Congress.

21.

Chris Murphy has received high scores from liberal groups such as Americans for Democratic Action, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and various labor unions; and low scores from conservative groups as the Club for Growth, American Conservative Union, and FreedomWorks.

22.

In 2008, the House of Representatives passed the "Frank Melville Supportive Housing Investment Act", which Chris Murphy authored to modernize and streamline Section 811, which governs federal supportive housing grants.

23.

Chris Murphy has called for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp; however, in February 2011, Chris Murphy voted to extend provisions of the Patriot Act.

24.

In 2009, Chris Murphy helped draft HR 3200, the House health-care reform bill.

25.

Chris Murphy defended his role in supporting the bill at a contentious town hall meeting in Simsbury in August 2009.

26.

Chris Murphy has argued that such a plan would not require government financing and would help to introduce competition into monopolized health insurance markets and help bring down costs.

27.

In May 2007, Chris Murphy organized a group of freshmen House members to support the creation of an independent, non-partisan ethics panel to review complaints filed against members of the US House of Representatives.

28.

Chris Murphy has been credited with helping to shape the independent Office of Congressional Ethics, which was passed into law by the House in March 2008.

29.

Chris Murphy sponsored a bill that would subject Supreme Court Justices to the same ethical code that applies to other federal judges and suggested in 2011 the possibility of an investigation to decide whether Justice Clarence Thomas had committed ethical violations that would justify removing him from office.

30.

Chris Murphy circulated a draft letter to other members of Congress asking the House Judiciary Committee leadership to hold a hearing on the Supreme Court Transparency and Disclosure Act, which would end the Supreme Court's immunity to judicial ethics laws.

31.

Contractors operating overseas: As a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Chris Murphy was highly critical of for-profit government contractors operating in Iraq, which functioned with little government oversight and scrutiny.

32.

Chris Murphy introduced and successfully passed into law the "Government Funding Transparency Act of 2008", which required private companies that do the majority of their businesses with the federal government to publicly disclose their top executives' salaries.

33.

Chris Murphy has been a proponent of the proposed New Haven-Hartford-Springfield Commuter Rail Line, an effort to use existing railroad tracks owned by Amtrak to provide daily commuter service on par with Southwestern Connecticut's Metro-North service into New York.

34.

In 2008, Chris Murphy successfully added an amendment to rail legislation making it easier for Amtrak and the state of Connecticut to cooperate on the rail project.

35.

Chris Murphy proposed reforms of the nation's 'missing-persons' databases, introducing "Billy's Law" in 2009 to improve coordination of law-enforcement efforts to locate missing persons.

36.

Chris Murphy announced on January 20,2011, that he would run for the Senate seat held by Joe Lieberman, who was retiring in the face of a very low approval rate.

37.

Chris Murphy defeated former Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz in the Democratic primary and defeated Republican candidate Linda McMahon in the general election.

38.

At the time of this loan, Chris Murphy was serving on the House Financial Services Committee.

39.

Chris Murphy took office as the junior United States senator for Connecticut on January 3,2013.

40.

In 2016, Chris Murphy walked 126 miles across the state of Connecticut, listening to constituents and holding daily town hall meetings.

41.

Chris Murphy repeated the walk in 2017, covering 106 miles and holding five town hall meetings.

42.

In early 2020, Chris Murphy met with Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif on the sidelines of Munich Security Conference.

43.

Chris Murphy stated that he will lead an investigation into the security breaches and law enforcement response during the attack.

44.

Chris Murphy has been a leading supporter of the Affordable Care Act in the Senate and has opposed Republican attempts to repeal the law, consistently speaking on the floor about the positive impact it has had on his constituents.

45.

Chris Murphy called the American Health Care Act of 2017 "an intellectual and moral dumpster fire," that will cause 24 million Americans to lose their health care coverage.

46.

Chris Murphy has introduced two pieces of legislation, the American Jobs Matter Act and the 21st Century Buy American Act to close loopholes in the existing Buy American laws and encourage the US government to purchase American-made goods.

47.

However, Chris Murphy voted against Bernie Sanders' proposed motion to United States Innovation and Competition Act concerning semiconductor manufacturers.

48.

The bill was informed by listening sessions that Senator Chris Murphy conducted across the state of Connecticut.

49.

Chris Murphy has an F rating with the National Rifle Association.

50.

Chris Murphy supported the bipartisan Manchin-Toomey background checks proposal, which would have strengthened and expanded the existing background check system and established a National Commission on Mass Violence to study in-depth all the causes of mass violence.

51.

On June 24,2015, Chris Murphy said, "Since Sandy Hook there has been a school shooting, on average, every week"; The Washington Post described this statement as misleading.

52.

In March 2018, Chris Murphy was one of ten senators to sign a letter to Chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Lamar Alexander and ranking Democrat Patty Murray requesting they schedule a hearing on the causes and remedies of mass shootings in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.

53.

In September 2020, Chris Murphy published a book on gun control, The Violence Inside Us: A Brief History of an Ongoing American Tragedy.

54.

Chris Murphy is one of the first members of Congress to come out in opposition to US support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen, which was launched in 2015.

55.

Chris Murphy is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the ranking Democratic member of the subcommittee on the Middle East and Counter-terrorism.

56.

Chris Murphy is renowned as one of the most vociferous critics of Russia in the Senate.

57.

In March 2016, Chris Murphy authored the bipartisan bill the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, along with Republican Senator Rob Portman.

58.

In September 2016, in advance of a UN Security Council resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, Chris Murphy signed an AIPAC-sponsored letter urging President Obama to veto "one-sided" resolutions against Israel.

59.

In July 2017, Chris Murphy voted in favor of the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act that placed sanctions on Iran together with Russia and North Korea.

60.

In May 2020, Chris Murphy voiced his opposition to Israel's plan to annex parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

61.

Chris Murphy has a "B" rating from NORML for his voting history regarding cannabis-related causes.

62.

Chris Murphy voted in favor of the Mikulski Medical Marijuana Amendment, which protects users in states with medical marijuana laws from federal interference.