Female voters carry him to next logical career step
The attack ads run against Rep. Chris Murphy painted him like a one-dimensional professional wrestling villain: The Politician.
The Connecticut congressman does have a conventional résumé for a 39-year-old senator-elect: He was class president at his high school for three years. He interned for former senator Chris Dodd, D-Conn. He has a law degree from the University of Connecticut. He ran for the state Legislature at age 25, and he spent four years in the state House and four years in the state Senate. He was elected to Congress in 2006, soundly defeating incumbent Republican Nancy Johnson, and is finishing his third term.
Murphy survived a storm of television ads by his opponent, former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon, a Republican who loaned her own campaign nearly $50 million in her second bid for the Senate. And he did so in part by courting the female vote, attacking McMahon’s wrestling plotlines as demeaning to women and suggesting she would “deny women health care” as a senator. At times, polls showed a 20-point gender gap in the race. Murphy succeeds one of the most independent voices in the Senate: Joe Lieberman, who split with the Democratic Party after supporting President Bush in 2004.
But Murphy refused to walk away from his party — even after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie came to Connecticut to stump for McMahon, linking Murphy to the former Democratic House speaker by calling him “Nancy Pelosi’s butler.”
Murphy said his agenda for the Senate will be much like what he has done throughout his career: supporting manufacturing through “Buy American” laws, promoting gay rights and focusing on children’s issues.
Murphy and his wife, Catherine, have two sons.