The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Murphy encounters rough road on walk across state
Gary Pavano pulled over his car when he saw Sen. Chris Murphy walking down a Berlin street Saturday morning.
Pavano, an air-conditioner repair man, wanted to talk to his senator about his high-deductible insurance plan. He was worried about how the growing U.S. deficit would affect his grandchildren.
And Pavano certainly did not want to see American dollars spent on housing illegal immigrants in detention facilities — he supported migrant children being separated from their parents if it would stop the flow of illegal immigration, he said.
His voice grew frustrated as he cried to Murphy, “I email you! Why didn’t you answer? I email you all the time. I get a boiler-plate answer!”
Murphy, wearing a green “Defender of the Universe” T-shirt, was polite.
“We get 5,000 letters every week, and unfortunately I don’t have the money to respond to every person individually,” he said — and tried to turn the conversation back to health care.
Scenes like this one unfolded repeatedly as Murphy, a Democrat who is seeking re-election in 2018, trekked from New Britain to Meriden Saturday as part of his third annual walk across the state.
There were plenty of warm moments Saturday. Avery’s Beverage manager Rob Metz welcomed Murphy to his store with custom-labeled soda, featuring Murphy’s face and an image of his footprints across Connecticut. And there was hearty applause for the senator at the Meriden Senior Center, where he held a town hall-style meeting.
But many constituents — some of whom said they liked Murphy and others who made it clear they did not — expressed frustration.
A few said they felt ignored by the party and by the junior senator who had hit the streets to stay, in his words, “radically in touch with the people I represent.”
Health care, immigration
At the town hall, Don Geckle, of Southington, said he thought Murphy was a good senator, but pushed him and the Democrats for more information about inflation and unemployment. He worried that people didn’t really know how bad the deficits were — and that maybe Democrats weren’t doing enough about it.
Another woman shook her head when Murphy told her there was little he could do about her rising prescription drug costs and health insurance deductibles if Democrats didn’t control Congress.
Sai Surapaneni, whose family came to Connecticut from India on H1B work visas, went to the microphone to beg Murphy to pay more attention to immigrants who came to the U.S. legally. Surapaneni’s college-age nieces and nephews were going to age out of their visasponsored immigration status, and they were still waiting and waiting for green cards, he said.
“All this talk is of the people who are coming here without legal documents,” Surapaneni’s said. “Yourself, the Connecticut senior senator (Richard Blumenthal) and the delegation are not really talking or doing anything about the people who came here legally.”
Murphy assured Surapaneni that not everything he did was reflected in the news, and in fact, H1B visas were something Democrats had been trying to work on since 2013.
Murphy, who identifies as a “progressive Democrat,” spent a lot of time explaining his positions on immigration in Berlin, where 53 percent of residents backed President Donald Trump in the 2016 election.
He does not support abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — also known as ICE — he said. He voted for a 2013 bill that would essentially “militarize” the border with Mexico. He wants a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who are paying taxes and have not committed crimes.
But in Berlin, Murphy had to fight hard against the reputation that Democrats want “open borders.”
“I can’t support you anymore,” said John O’Brien, an unaffiliated voter from Berlin with a Trump sticker on his car. O’Brien was a former union Democrat, he said, but abandoned the party because “I’m not getting Social Security increases because we are supporting people like them,” referring to undocumented immigrants.
Murphy reminding him that waves of immigrants throughout history — like O’Brien’s ancestors — sought to come to this country. He was composed and firm.
Getting an earful
“I do this because I want to hear from everybody,” Murphy told O’Brien, before continuing up the road.
Ann Reilly, a friend of Pavano, the air-conditioner man, dismissed Murphy’s walk as a “show.”
She waved her finger as she pressed him on the impact of immigration on the economy. Immigrants should stay in their countries while they apply for asylum, she said.
“There a lots of people who legitimately come to the border because they fear for their life or their kids’ lives,” Murphy said.
“You could say that, quite honestly, going into Hartford and New Britain, parts of the areas, right?” Reilly interrupted. “My husband and I, we’re starting to watch Fox News in the morning, and I’m like ‘Oh my God!’”
Murphy disagreed, “Ecuador and Hartford, Connecticut are, respectfully, not the same.”
Those views were very different what Murphy heard the day before while walking in Hartford, he said. There, voters want to share their disgust for Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies. The capital city voted 90 percent in favor of Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
But Connecticut is a political patchwork of red and blue: the state Senate is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.
Murphy declined to comment on the two Republicans, Matthew Corey and Dominic Rapini, who will primary for the right to challenge him in November.
At the national level, while he doesn’t support all of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ policies, Murphy suggested that for Democrats to win in November, might need to learn from the big-idea presidential campaign focused on economic issues that Sanders ran in 2016.
“Democrats often pay way too much attention to identity politics and cultural and social issues, at the expense of the kitchen table issues that I’m hearing about on this walk,” Murphy said.
Murphy will keep trekking. He finishes his walk Sunday in New Haven at 1 p.m. at Food Truck Paradise on Long Wharf Drive.