SAXAPAHAW, N.C. — Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy isn’t drawing stadium-size crowds like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are as he tours the country talking to voters. But in a packed concert hall in rural North Carolina, people are starting to view the Democrat as worthy of the national spotlight.
Murphy and Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., have been staging events in Republican congressional districts in recent weeks, trolling GOP lawmakers such as Rep. Richard Hudson, who represents the area they visited Thursday. Hudson, the chairman of the House GOP campaign arm, has discouraged Republicans from holding town halls, so Murphy and Frost decided to hold one on his home turf in North Carolina.
“We are doing the job that these Republican congressmen and senators won’t do,” Murphy told the hyped-up crowd of mostly older voters at the event, while acknowledging that Democrats need to do more to soothe their anxiety and counter President Donald Trump. “I want to make sure that everywhere, in every corner of this country, people are willing to stand up and fight.”
As other Democrats grasp for a response to Trump’s election, unsure of how to confront him, Murphy is channeling his own frustration and anger into a sustained blitz of television appearances, fundraising appeals, Senate floor speeches and events like the one in North Carolina. He also is talking directly to voters on social media, including through lengthy live videos on Instagram where he sits in his kitchen with a cocktail and tries to explain what he sees as “the central story” of Trump’s presidency — “the billionaire takeover of our government made possible by the destruction of our democracy.”
It’s a methodical approach for Murphy, 51, a serious-minded legislator who has been most well known for his yearslong fight to stem gun violence in the aftermath of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 first-grade students and six educators.
While the kitchen talks on Instagram seem to come more naturally to Murphy than riling up a crowd, his message is clearly resonating with his party’s base of voters, many of whom are angry at Democrats in Washington for inaction. He raised around $8 million in the first quarter of the year, a significant sum that could rival the totals for Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, who have been drawing much larger crowds on a tour together.
“I mean, I’m not Bernie Sanders,” Murphy said in an interview after the event in Saxapahaw. “I’m not going to draw 70,000 people. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still have an obligation to try to go out and support a national mobilization.”
Frustration with the Democratic Party’s leaders came to a boil last month, with most of the anger directed at Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who voted for a Republican bill to keep the government open just as the base was hoping to see more fight from their elected officials. Murphy was strongly against the bill, even if opposing it meant Democrats would trigger a government shutdown.
“I think when people see us engaged in risk adverse behavior, then they are much less likely to show up for rallies to ultimately engage in the kind of civil disobedience we might need to save the democracy,” Murphy said.
His fundraising haul, and his barrage of media and events, begs questions about his future ambitions. But it is unclear where Murphy’s moment might lead. He insists that he is not thinking about a presidential bid or a future in Senate leadership after the No. 2 Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, announced this week that he will retire next year.
“I think it’s probably not a coincidence that my content is breaking through and more people are listening to me at a time when I’m not getting up every day thinking about my personal political future,” said Murphy, who was reelected to the Senate last year.
“There’s not going to be an election in 2028 if we don’t win this fight right now. So it seems kind of silly to think about anything other than the emergency that exists today. I’m not trying to avoid the question. It’s not a cop out. That is legitimately what drives me.”
Ron Osborne, the chairman of the Democratic Party in Alamance County, where Thursday’s event was located, said he had not previously considered Murphy a major contender for the presidency in 2028. But “he’s doing the right things,” Osborne said.
“He is speaking out where others could do the same thing and have not,” Osborne said, and “that takes courage.”
Terry Greenlund, a 78-year-old Democrat who was also in the audience, said he thinks Murphy “has a way of talking with people.”
“I think it’s time for a new generation to move in with some new views and insight and energy,” Greenlund said, echoing many others in the room.
Murphy, 51 and the father of two teenagers, seems to be enjoying the attention. He joked at the event that he may not be as “cool” as Frost, who is the youngest member of Congress at 28. But Murphy is still decades younger than many of his colleagues, who have controlled the party for years.
“I’m trying to be dad cool,” Murphy said.
Murphy was in Missouri on Friday after visiting a Republican district in Michigan with Frost last month. And they are not the only Democrats venturing into red states. In addition to Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the 2024 vice presidential nominee, and Rep. Ro Khanna of California have also recently traveled to talk to voters in Republican areas.
Murphy said he does not want to “reinvent the wheel” with his fundraising haul, but he does not want to sit on it, either. He said he plans to help organizations mobilize voters before the 2026 midterm elections and also put pressure on Republicans as they try to push tax and spending cuts through Congress.
“The only way that history tells us that you stop an elected leader from converting a country away from democracy is mass mobilization,” he said.
“Our party has made mistakes, and if we don’t learn from those mistakes,” Murphy said, “we’re cooked.”
