Murphy Is Victor In Tight House Race

Connecticut’s fifth Congressional race was one of the tightest in the country, and at times it looked like the Republicans would pick up another House seat. But as WNPR’s Nancy Cohen reports, incumbent Democrat Chris Murphy pulled out a victory over Republican Sam Caligiuri.

Only four years ago it was Chris Murphy who was criticizing the incumbent Congresswoman Nancy Johnson. Murphy ran ads that tied Johnson to then President George Bush. In this year’s very tight race, Republican challenger Sam Caliguiri drove home the idea that incumbent Murphy supported many of President Obama’s initiatives.

“That’s the stimulus bill, which in my judgment didn’t grow the economy, the bailouts that I think could have been done better with more accountability for voters than what was passed and approved by my opponent and President Obama’s health care bill, which I think is the wrong way to do health care reform.”

Although the anti-incumbent message resonated with many, the majority of voters stuck with Chris Murphy. Voters who have gotten to know him.

“He helped us. We helped him.”

That’s machinist Mark Nati who was at Murphy’s campaign headquarters in Waterbury last night. Nati has worked at Pratt and Whitney for 25 years. He says this summer Murphy was there for the workers when company officials talked about closing the  Cheshire  plant.

“The day after they announced it. on July 22nd he was in the state of Connecticut helping us and they announced it on the 21sst.”

“Murphy! Murphy! Murphy!”

When Murphy stepped to the podium to thank his supporters last night he acknowledged it had been a tough race.

“It wasn’t so along that a lot of people had come close to writing us off here in the 5th district. There were a lot of people who said we couldn’t overcome the national Republican tidal wave. There were a lot of people who said that we couldn’t turn out the people who cared about change.”

Murphy’s campaign focused on a “buy American” plan – that he said would create manufacturing jobs.  He helped craft health care reform and supported the cap and trade bill.  He  told the crowd of supporters he may be going back to a Republican-led Congress that looks very different than the one he has served in for the past four years. And that he’s ready to heed the message from voters this election by reaching across the aisle.

“They want Washington to put aside the politics and start working together for the common good of this country.”

Murphy says he doesn’t think people cast their votes based only on economic anger, but on hope the economy can get better for the middle class in the 5th district.  

For WNPR, I’m Nancy Cohen.