Chris Murphy was in full campaign-pitch mode Saturday, imploring Democratic volunteers in Plainville to make one more call, knock on one more door, recruit just one more friend on behalf of Kamala Harris, Congresswoman Jahana Hayes and Rebecca Martinez, a candidate for the Connecticut General Assembly.
Hayes won an uncomfortably close race two years ago. Martinez lost an even closer one. Both are in rematches, positioned to win in Murphy’s telling, if only the volunteers gathered in a storefront headquarters last weekend can close the sale in the final 10 days of a polarizing and exhausting election cycle.
“You’ll be proud on election night, when we elect Rebecca, we make Kamala Harris president of the United States of America,” Murphy said. “And, by the way, we also get a nice big, healthy margin for one of the most important change makers in the House of Representatives, my friend, Jahana Hayes!”
The volunteers whooped and clapped. Hayes, clad in a blue Harris-Walz delegate tee shirt and baseball cap, grinned widely and waited for the noise to subside somewhat before chiding Murphy for failing to mention there was someone else on the ballot, another candidate in a rematch.
“I’m on the ballot, too,” Murphy said, smiling sheepishly.
Such is the state of Murphy’s confident campaign for a third term to the U.S. Senate.
For the second time in three races, his Republican opponent is Matthew Corey, 60, a restaurateur from Manchester who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House in 2014 and 2016, for the U.S. Senate in 2018 and the state Senate in 2020. His high water mark was the 39% of the vote he got losing to Murphy six years ago.
He trailed Murphy by 16 percentage points last month in a Connecticut Mirror poll, one of the few public polls in the race. More than 60% of those polled said they never heard of him. Another 20% declined to say if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of him.
In the last reporting period, from Oct. 1 to 16, Corey raised $38,475, bringing his total to $185,506. Over the same period, Murphy had net contributions of $225,827, bringing his total to $14.1 million. He had $6.8 million cash on hand.
Corey acknowledges the long, long odds of an underfunded and largely unknown Republican unseating a Democrat in a state that has not elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since Lowell P. Weicker Jr.’s last win 42 years ago. There are other reasons to run.
“I need to protect the Republican brand, whether it’s federal races, state Senate races and state rep. races,” Corey said Saturday. “So we need a voice, a strong voice at the top of the ticket, to bring people out to vote. So my main mission is that. But look, I never get into something I don’t think I could win.”
He spoke in Portland, where he arrived for a campaign event to learn he had the wrong day.
On Wednesday night, the race will get a rare, if late moment in the spotlight: Murphy and Corey are to meet at 7 p.m. in a debate televised live from the New Haven studios of WTNH News 8. It will be broadcast over the air and live-streamed on www.wtnh.com.
“People need to be held accountable, whether in a blue state or the reddest state. And we understand where we live, but people need to be held accountable,” Corey said. “And obviously, Sen. Murphy has taken Connecticut for granted, because he’s not even campaigning here.”
The debate comes after 10 days of early voting and a week after Corey aired his first television commercial with a modest buy. Corey said he was grateful for the one debate but resentful of its timing.
“I’m a simple working-class man. I’m a blue-collar guy who represents probably 85% of Connecticut. But is it fair to the constituents of the state of Connecticut that you don’t have the courage and conviction to debate before early voting starts?” Corey said.
Also are on the ballot are Dr. Justin C. Paglino of the Green Party and Robert Finley Hyde of his own Cheaper Gas Groceries Party, who have done minimal fundraising. Neither are invited to the debate.
Murphy, 51, who won three terms in the U.S. House before running for an open Senate seat in 2012, has campaigned at least twice in Pennsylvania, a presidential swing state and home to Bob Casey, a Democratic senator in a competitive reelection race. With 23 Democratic and 11 Republican seats on the ballot this year, the Senate election map favors the GOP.
“I have a pretty wide view of what’s good for the people I represent,” Murphy said. “I need Jahana there with me. I need a Democratic Senate. So when I’m campaigning for Jahana or even when I’m in Pennsylvania campaigning for Bob Casey, I really view it strictly through a lens of what’s good for the state.”
Connecticut voters lose if Republicans regain a Senate majority, Murphy said.
“That means we’re closer to a national abortion ban or another set of tax cuts that don’t reach most people in Connecticut,” Murphy said. “I’m not taking my race for granted. I just think I have to win, but I also have to bring some friends with me in order for my state to be in the best possible position.”
Unlike many Republican candidates in Connecticut who keep their distance from Donald J. Trump, Corey embraces him. He attended the Trump rally Sunday night in Madison Square Garden, where the warm-up act was an insult comic.
The comic, Tony Hinchcliffe, referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” made a vulgar remark on the sexual habits of Latino migrants, made a watermelon crack referring to a Black man and characterized Jews as cheap and Palestinians as violent.
The Trump campaign issued a statement saying the Puerto Rico joke does not reflect the views of the candidate. On a conservative talk radio program, the Vinnie Penn Project on WELI, Corey said Monday he didn’t arrive until after Hinchcliffe performed.
“But let’s just take a look at Puerto Rico,” Corey said. “Look, there’s some hard-working people down there. There’s a lot of corruption in that government down there.”
Corey posted a picture of himself at the rally as part of a fundraising appeal.
Corey said the rally, overall, was upbeat, and he attended to be “part of history.”
“It was just an amazing event, a hopeful event. I just want to contrast that with, you know, the Democratic rallies. It’s just a hateful rhetoric,” Corey said of Democratic rhetoric. “Just nothing to move the country forward. It’s just always, ‘If President Trump gets back in the office, the country’s going to go to hell.’”
Corey said he will try to make the case Wednesday that Murphy is an obstructionist who would work to thwart a second Trump White House on issues like crime and immigration.
Murphy does not dispute he would do what he could to thwart Trump, who is promising retribution for his political enemies.
“He calls the biggest threat to America ‘the enemy from within.’ You know who he means by that. He means us, right? He means anybody that has the temerity to stand up to his hateful, divisive agenda,” Murphy told the campaign volunteers Saturday. “And so this country is not America anymore if Donald Trump wins and does the things he says he’s going to do.”
Murphy said he campaigned to help Democrats increase their General Assembly majorities as a bulwark against Trump.
“As the Republican Party here turns Trumpier, I think it’s important for us to have big, big majorities. You never know when there’s a bad year when you lose a bunch of seats, so you want your margins to be as big as possible,” Murphy said.
Murphy noted Trump allies have won statewide primaries. Two years ago, Leora Levy won a U.S. Senate primary with an endorsement by Trump. This year, Corey won a primary against Gerry Smith, a Republican who kept his distance from Trump.
“There still are a lot of Republicans in the state legislature who are not MAGA-aligned,” Murphy said. “My worry is that these primaries eventually will make it harder for more mainstream Republicans to run. I think we’re lucky that we have that there are still a lot of non-Trump-aligned Republicans in Hartford. I just worry that those days might be numbered, especially if he wins.”
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
