The congressman from the 5th District is Chris Murphy, a Democrat elected in 2006. Murphy grew up in Wethersfield, and his father is a prominent member of a Hartford law firm. He graduated from Williams College in 1996 and the same year, at age 22, became the campaign manager for Democrat Charlotte Koskoff, who came 1,587 votes short of ousting veteran Republican Rep. Nancy Johnson. The lessons of that campaign would serve Murphy well in his political career. He won a seat in the state House in 1998, got a law degree in 2002 and later that year won election to the state Senate. He served as co-chairman of the public health committee, where he worked to curb hospital collection practices, ban smoking in workplaces, and increase investment in embryonic-stem-cell research.

In early 2005 Murphy moved into Johnson’s 5th District, announcing in April that he planned to challenge her. He was backed by the Democratic establishment and faced no primary opposition. Unlike Connecticut’s other two competitive congressional races in 2006, this one did not revolve around the Iraq War and President Bush. Much of the debate focused instead on the Medicare prescription-drug benefit that moderate Republican Johnson had helped design in 2003 as chairwoman of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee. The liberal group MoveOn.org ran ads in April 2006 tying Johnson to disgraced former GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and to the oil and pharmaceutical industries, spots designed to elevate the competitiveness of what was then viewed as a second-tier race.

Murphy contended that the Republicans’ prescription drug program’s enrollment deadlines penalized seniors, and he spotlighted drug industry contributions to Johnson to portray her as a shill for the industry. National security issues did not play a major role in the race until the day after the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In a television ad resembling a movie trailer for an espionage thriller, Johnson attacked Murphy for opposing the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. The 30-second spot, which featured a series of rapid images, suggested that seeking a court warrant for surveillance takes too long and could jeopardize national security. The security focus briefly put Murphy on the defensive, and some Democrats feared Murphy was too slow to respond. But he struck back with an ad that implied Johnson was slow to help a mother obtain health coverage to pay for surgery to fix her infant’s cleft palate. In October, Johnson used an ad to accuse Murphy of voting to raise taxes 27 times and for being weak on terrorism and soft on drug dealers. But all the negative campaigning may have undermined Johnson’s image as a cool-headed, seasoned legislator with a grandmotherly air. Johnson, who collected over $1.2 million from the health care industry alone, outspent Murphy $5 million to $2.5 million. But Murphy won 54%-44%.

In the House, Murphy has established a centrist voting record among Democrats. On the Financial Services Committee, he added an amendment to a mortgage-overhaul bill that restricted “backdoor payments” to mortgage brokers that were often passed along to unwitting borrowers. He took the lead in organizing freshman Democrats for ethics reform, especially the creation of an outside commission to review ethics complaints against House members. Although his proposal failed, the House did create an Office of Congressional Ethics, with independent investigators. In April 2008, the House passed his Government Contractor Accountability Act, requiring disclosure of the names and salaries of top officers of large companies that made most of their money from contracts with the government. “If there are people out there making millions off of governments, we should know about it,” he said. In 2009, he won a seat on the influential Energy and Commerce Committee, where he was positioned to work on health care issues, a primary focus of the committee and its chairman, Henry Waxman of California.

The National Republican Congressional Committee initially saw an opportunity when State Sen. David Cappiello challenged Murphy in 2008. Cappiello ran as a John McCain-style maverick, and he criticized the hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars given to Murphy by finance firms as well as his support for the 2008 bailout of financial markets. “Did Chris Murphy shake up Washington, or shake down Wall Street?” he asked in a closing ad. Murphy emphasized the need for sweeping policy change, including a reworking of tax and trade policies that had led to the financial crisis. National party interest waned in the closing weeks as Cappiello failed to gain traction, and Murphy won 59%-39%.