RMA Lecture – U.S. Senator Chris Murphy @ First Presbyterian Church

The speaker will be  Chris Murphy, (D) Junior U.S. Senator from Connecticut.

Chris Murphy, Junior US Senator from Connecticut, previously served in the United States House of Representatives, where he represented

Connecticut’s 5th Congressional District from 2007–2013.  Prior to this he served as a member of both chambers of the Connecticut General Assembly, serving in the Connecticut House of Representatives (1999–2003) and the Connecticut Senate (2003–2007).   As a state senator, he was co-chairman of the General Assembly’s Public Health Committee for four years.

Chris Murphy announced in 2011 that he would run for the U.S.Senate in the 2012 election after veteran U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent, decided to retire. He won the Democratic endorsement at the convention and soundly and went on to defeat the wealthy Republican Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, in the general election.

He is currently the youngest United States Senator.

Health care has been major theme in Murphy’s political career.   As a state senator, he helped with the passage of the state’s Stem Cell Investment Act, which at the time made Connecticut the third state in the nation, behind California and New Jersey, to provide funding to support embryonic and human adult stem cell research.

Murphy also has called for reforming congressional ethics. He is a critic of the Ethics Committee, which he said operated under a truce not to investigate or punish fellow members for violations.  The House passed a Murphy proposal in 2008 that creates an independent ethics panel that can initiate and investigate claims of ethics violations against members of Congress, and forward them to the Ethics Committee in case punitive action is needed.