U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) has become one of congressional Democrats’ most outspoken anti-Trump voices. What is he doing differently from his colleagues?
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas to discuss his article, “Chris Murphy, a new ‘pugilistic populist,’ maps resistance to Trump,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Mark’s story here.
WSHU: Hello, Mark.
MP: Hello.
WSHU: You say U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) is at the forefront of Democratic resistance to the Trump administration. Is that what prompted you to spend some time with him?
MP: Yes. I mean, this is something that has been evolving since the week after the election. He had that kind of heart-to-heart chat via video on Twitter (X) with people, issuing a bit of a mea culpa on behalf of the Democratic Party for losing touch with its working-class base, praising Bernie Sanders, saying that he had been wrongfully described as having fringe positions. And ever since then, he has really been trying to assert a role as somebody leading the resistance to President Trump, but also offering Democrats some suggestions on how to proceed. Unlike Senator Sanders, he does not really have a fiery mass rally type of approach to this. You know, I likened him to somebody who is more appropriate for a TED talk. His style is almost like he's coaching the party.
So anyway, we decided it was time to spend a little time with the senator who's been raising a boatload of money and promising to go out on the road to bring this message to Republican districts. And anyway, that was just it was his time to spend a little bit of time with the Senator in Washington. So I spent a couple of days with him in DC, and a little bit more in Connecticut.
WSHU: One fascinating aspect about him is his social media savvy. What were you able to observe?
MP: Yes, he is very much of the generation who's comfortable on social media, both short form and long form messaging. What I mean by that is he also has a Substack account, and he will write longish pieces going a little bit deeper about what he's talking about. He is not averse to being repetitive. He repurposes his messaging, and he adds to it, which is considered to be the bedrock of modern political communication. One should not be shy about repeating oneself. That is the advice that politicians get these days, and he does so in different venues. He's on Instagram. He is on really every social media platform. When I was in Washington, he delivered a floor speech outlining what he saw as the President's approach to establishing an autocracy, and he gave a different version of that on Instagram just Thursday, which has gotten a fair amount of attention. Again, it's a different demographic. It's a younger audience. And he is not trying to shake the rafters of an old school speech, but he is really coming across as somebody giving a heart-to-heart in a more intimate setting. And that's what these videos are. So he is very much a politician of the moment, as far as how you communicate with the base and try to expand the base.
WSHU: Talking about not being formal, I mean, he'd play a basketball game, and right after that, he'd get online and do something. And it's woven into everyday living for him.
MP: It is, and he handles his own social media accounts, and he does most of his own writing for speeches, which is what he has told me. And and so he's very comfortable as a communicator, but again, a communicator that is trying to make a substantive point in a way that the temperature is a little bit cooler than what we get from Bernie Sanders or AOC, who are having a very successful series of rallies that have attracted upwards of 30,000 people at times, which is bigger than Kamala Harris did during her campaign. So it's a very impressive turnout, representing something as far as the cord they are striking with people who are upset with President Trump. At this point, Senator Murphy is raising money much the same way Bernie Sanders does. It's small-dollar contributions casting a national net, and in the first quarter of this year, he raised $8 million that way, which, as far as among the senators who are not facing an immediate re-election challenge, made him second only to Bernie Sanders in raising money.
WSHU: Bernie Sanders has run for president a couple of times now. Does Murphy have that as an ambition?
MP: That's always a question with Senator Murphy. When you are raising money and it's off cycle, and whether you have the profile that he does on social media, inevitably, those questions come up. He continues to duck those questions. He insisted to me that he is motivated by rallying the troops, as it were, against what he sees as a threat to democracy. He said he does not have any plans for higher office, but you know that's always in the back of your mind when you're looking at somebody like Murphy. The party, obviously, is struggling over who will be the new generation of leadership.
Bernie Sanders is very popular, but he is 83 years old. He is not talking about running again when his term expires, which is the same time as Senator Murphy; his term would be up in 2030. So you know Cory Booker, who had that record-setting filibuster, Booker is a friend of Murphy's. He's a contemporary. They are in that same group of folks that people are looking at. Booker ran for president once before. Murphy is one of those people who is always on the list of people who are mentioned, you know, the Washington Post over the years mentioned him as a likely candidate for president in different cycles, even putting him up with people who had already created campaign committees and were actively running. Murphy has never done that. You know, he has to decide what he wants to be over the long term.
WSHU: But it is interesting that he's going on this, he's going out to red states to do some events with the youngest member of the House, which is Maxwell Frost, I believe.
MP: Correct.
WSHU: Who's 28 years old? You have Bernie Sanders going with a 35-year-old AOC, so what's going on there?
MP: Well, yes, that's a great question. He said, you know, Congressman Frost shares his sense of urgency, but clearly there are some programming considerations, you know, a little bit of diversity, as far as age appeal, racial diversity.
WSHU: Frost was supported by Bernie Sanders.
MP: He was, and in fact, he has appeared on stage with Bernie Sanders.
WSHU: He introduced him at Coachella. I believe.
MP: Yes, he did. But you know, when it comes to Murphy's ambitions, you have to remember that this is somebody who was elected to the State House of Representatives at the age of 25, he was elected to the State Senate age of 29, to the U.S. House of Representatives at 33, and to the Senate at 39. So now he's 51, and the Senate is a place where, as an individual legislator, you can have great influence. But the question is, is that enough for Chris Murphy?
When people speculate about presidential ambitions, you know, they overlook whether or not maybe he's more interested in being the Senate Democratic leader at some point. He very publicly broke with Chuck Schumer over the question of Schumer's voting with Republicans to keep the government open. Murphy is preaching that the Democratic members of Congress need to be more risk-tolerant and to really take some dramatic steps, and letting the government shut down on the Republicans' watch would be one of those steps. It would be risky, Murphy acknowledges, but yeah, that is another potential career path for him. But again, he is very close to the vest on whether he has that ambition; he really waved off any questions about his future when I was chatting with him in his office the other day.
WSHU: In the meantime, he's emerged as a leader in the resistance against President Trump.
MP: And it's a position he's been very comfortable in taking, since really the week after the election, and building on it ever since. So again, when it comes to his personal ambition, it's natural to look at this activity and say, where does he want to go with this? For the time being, he says, really his only goal is to get the party back on track, where it's speaking to working-class people and also resisting what he is describing as President Trump's efforts to establish a de facto autocracy.
