CHICAGO — U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, who has been an outspoken messenger on curbing gun violence, returned to the convention stage Wednesday night in a different capacity: as Democrats’ lead negotiator on a bipartisan border bill that ultimately got short-circuited in Congress.
Murphy argued that he is uniquely positioned to talk about the issue, as someone who was inside the negotiating room earlier this year and saw firsthand how the bill was steamrolled by former President Donald Trump, whose allies “helped us write the whole bill.”
The request to have Murphy focus his speech solely on border policy shows that Democrats believe it will be one of the defining issues of the November elections. He followed speeches from a Texas congresswoman who serves a district along the U.S.-Mexico border and a New Yorker who won his House seat back after centering his race around the issue.
Murphy used his five-minute speech to draw a contrast between Trump’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’ records on immigration, focusing on her past role in prosecuting drug smugglers and human traffickers.
“Trump says a safe nation can’t be an immigrant nation. That’s flat wrong, and Kamala Harris knows it,” Murphy said. “Kamala Harris knows we can be a nation of immigrants and immigration laws.”
“That’s why, when she’s president, she will bring that border bill back, and she’ll pass it,” he added. “The beautiful thing about America is that we can be both a nation of immigrants who love their country and a nation with a secure border.”
Murphy’s primetime address comes eight years after his first-ever convention speech, when he repudiated a GOP-led Congress for doing “absolutely nothing” on gun control. Years went by without any movement on the issue, but the politics briefly changed after mass shootings in 2022 that led to the first federal gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years, known as the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
In his burgeoning role as a Senate negotiator, Murphy has been making the rounds for the past three days of the convention, talking about both gun safety and border policy in TV interviews, events and delegation breakfast meetings. Conventions serve as a morale boost for the party and the presidential ticket, but they also serve as opportunities to do behind-the-scenes networking.
His primetime speech gave him the greatest visibility of the week yet, particularly at a time when his name is starting to circulate again as someone who could serve in a potential Harris administration.
“It’s probably true that a lot of people would expect that I was going up on stage to talk about guns because of the success we’ve had in driving down violence rates,” Murphy said in an interview prior to his primetime address.
“The border bill has become the way for Democrats to talk about this huge difference between our two parties,” he continued. “That’s not what I intended. I wanted that bill to pass. I didn’t want it to be a political talking point. But given the fact that Republicans killed it and Kamala Harris says she’ll pass it, we should lift it up.”
At the 2016 convention in Philadelphia, the first-term Democratic senator bemoaned a GOP-led Congress for blocking movement on preventing gun violence after the Sandy Hook school shooting. He recounted his 15-hour filibuster on the Senate floor from a month earlier.
“I am furious that in the three years since Sandy Hook, three years of almost daily bloodshed in our cities, the Republican Congress has done absolutely nothing to prevent the next massacre,” Murphy said in his convention speech in 2016. “It stokes inside me a sense of outrage that I’ve never felt before.”
But the central theme of Wednesday night’s speech focused on the compromise he largely crafted with Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma and Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
The border bill requires the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to prohibit entry into the U.S. if encounters at the border reached a certain level, raises the standard of “credible fear of persecution” when claiming asylum, limits presidential parole authority, issues more work permits and visas and provides legal counsel for unaccompanied minors under 13 during removal proceedings.
Murphy has acknowledged the concessions he made to broker the deal, leaving out Democratic priorities like pathways to citizenship for Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants, though it did so for Afghans and children of H-1B visa holders. That led to criticisms, including from some advocates in Connecticut, of sacrificing core priorities of the party in the name of achieving bipartisanship.
The Trump campaign released a statement shortly after Murphy’s speech, calling him “a shameless liar” when he stated that “For 20 years, Kamala Harris has been tough as nails when it comes to securing our border.”
While Murphy did not discuss gun safety or the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act from the main stage, he has been touting the law — and the work that remains on the issue — on the sidelines of the convention.
Shortly after arriving in Chicago on Monday afternoon, he spoke at an event hosted by the gun advocacy group Giffords, which was borne out of the work from former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz., who was shot in the head during a mass shooting in 2011.
He sat next to Giffords, who warmly embraced him and held onto his hand throughout much of the event. Murphy credited the former congresswoman as one of the key players in helping pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. As he has at similar events, Murphy said the bill does not go far enough on issues like universal background checks and an assault weapons ban.
“It is not close to what we need to do, but it is proof of concept if we continue to build this movement, if we continue to get these legislative wins,” Murphy said at Monday’s event.
At Wisconsin delegation’s breakfast on Wednesday morning, he used his five-minute speech to talk to Democrats about his and Harris’ work on gun violence prevention.
Murphy, who is likely to play a surrogate-type role for the Harris ticket, notably spoke to a swing state that could end up determining which party wins the White House.
“I feel really embarrassed that I spent the first half of my political life not working on the issue of gun violence, and then something truly awful happened in my state. I’ve been trying to make up for lost time since then, but we ran up against roadblock after roadblock in the 10 years after Sandy Hook,” Murphy told delegates from Wisconsin.
Conventions can raise profiles and give lawmakers a platform that can sometimes serve as a national launch pad.
Murphy’s opponent, Matthew Corey, has taken note of that.
Corey, who lost to Murphy in 2018 and won the GOP nomination to challenge him against this fall, has tweeted jabs about Murphy throughout the convention week, labeling him as “a secretary of State wannabe” and asking if he will commit to a Senate debate before early voting begins in late October.
Allies and friends of Murphy see an expansive political future for Murphy, whatever that may look like.
State Comptroller Sean Scanlon, who used to work with Murphy on both the official and campaign side, believes the senator has earned the spot in the national conversation. But he said he expects Murphy to keep the focus on his own reelection race.
“He’s done a good job of the job he has, which has led to him being in the conversation. He deserves to be there,” Scanlon said. “He’s put the work in. He would make an incredible addition to the Cabinet, but I think his focus right now is just doing that job he likes to do right now.”
“What happens after that, whether it’s this year or in the future, it’s not what’s on his mind,” Scanlon added.
Murphy essentially echoed that point when asked if he had interest in potentially serving as U.S. Secretary of State or in another Cabinet-level position in the future.
“I’m really proud of the work that I’ve been table to do in the Senate to bring people together. My focus is on making sure that Kamala Harris is reelected, making sure that I’m reelected, making sure Jahana Hayes is reelected,” Murphy said. “I’ll cross bridges when I get to them, but we gotta get [Harris] elected first.”
“Whether it was Joe Lieberman or Chris Dodd, Connecticut has always had senators that worked really hard to reach out across the aisle,” Murphy said.
Dodd, who spent 30 years in the U.S. Senate serving Connecticut, believes Murphy has a bright future ahead regardless of where he lands.
“I think he has a terrific future depending on what he wants to do,” Dodd said in an interview after the Connecticut delegation’s breakfast in Chicago. “I don’t think there are any parameters that will confine him. He has a great opportunity going forward whether he stays in the Senate in Connecticut or decides to do something else.”
The Connecticut Mirror/Connecticut Public Radio federal policy reporter position is made possible, in part, by funding from the Robert and Margaret Patricelli Family Foundation.
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
