Chris Murphy

Chris Murphy (born August 3, 1973, White Plains, New York, U.S.) is an American politician who was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 2012 and began representing Connecticut in that body the following year. In 2024 Murphy comfortably won reelection against Republican challenger Matthew Corey and two other candidates. Murphy previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives (2007–13).

Education and state politics

Murphy was born in a suburb of New York City. When he was a child, his family moved to a suburb of Hartford, Connecticut, where his father had a legal partnership. In 1996 he earned bachelor’s degrees in history and in political science from Williams College, with a year of study abroad at the University of Oxford. Murphy then studied law (J.D., 2002) at the University of Connecticut, where he met Catherine Holahan. The couple later married (2007) and had two children.

While still a student, Murphy was elected (1998) to the Connecticut House of Representatives, in which he served from 1999 to 2003. He then became a member (2003–06) of the state Senate, where he was assistant senate majority leader during his last year in office. While in the Connecticut legislature, Murphy sponsored numerous socially progressive initiatives, including successful efforts to improve the state’s auto-emissions standards, ban indoor smoking in public spaces and restaurants, and advance the cause of civil unions and eventually marriage equality. During that time he also practiced law in Hartford, specializing in real-estate law.

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U.S. Congress

In 2006 Murphy successfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives, and he took office the following year. In 2012 he ran for the U.S. Senate and defeated Republican candidate Linda McMahon in her second failed run in as many years. Murphy officially entered the Senate in 2013.

While in Congress, Murphy earned a reputation as a liberal Democrat. In the wake of the Sandy Hook School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, he assailed the National Rifle Association for its opposition to gun reform. He was a vocal supporter of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010) and helped block Republican efforts in both the House and the Senate to repeal it or defund its provisions. He was also active in public lands conservation measures, and he sponsored or cosponsored several bills dealing with children’s health and education. Murphy easily won reelection in 2018, and he authored The Violence Inside Us: A Brief History of an Ongoing American Tragedy (2020), which explored the history of gun violence in the United States and the challenges of enacting lasting gun control measures. In 2024 Murphy won a third term in office.

On October 31, 2026, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy suffered a stroke. It happened only days before the midterm elections, and he had been campaigning for various candidates. The 53-year-old politician began to feel numbness in his arm while attending his son’s hockey game. Murphy was taken to a hospital, where it was determined that he had suffered a stroke. According to his office, he is expected to make a full recovery.