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Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut is being monitored at Johns Hopkins Hospital after suffering a stroke on Saturday, his office announced on Sunday. The 53 year old Democrat is awake and alert, and his doctors expect him to make a full recovery.
Murphy began feeling numbness in his arm on Saturday afternoon while he was at his son’s hockey game. He was taken to a local hospital, where doctors found that he had suffered a stroke. He was then transferred to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore for further monitoring, where he is responding well to treatment.
Major Takeaways
- Sen. Chris Murphy suffered a stroke on Saturday after feeling numbness in his arm at his son’s hockey game.
- He is at Johns Hopkins Hospital, awake and alert, and his office says doctors expect a full recovery.
- His office has not said what type of stroke it was or when he might leave the hospital.
- Murphy is not on the ballot this year. His seat comes up again in 2030.
“The doctors are encouraged by his progress, he is awake and alert, and we are optimistic he will make a full recovery,” his chief of staff, Allison Herwitt, said in a statement. Herwitt did not say what type of stroke Murphy suffered, and the office gave no timetable for his discharge or his return to Washington.
Murphy has represented Connecticut in the Senate since 2013, after six years in the House of Representatives. He sits on the Appropriations Committee and has been one of the Democratic Party’s leading voices on immigration and on the wars in the Middle East. After the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in 2012, in his home state and in the district he then represented in the House, Murphy became the Senate’s most visible voice for stronger gun laws, a role that carried him onto the national stage. He has been talked about as a possible contender for the presidency in 2028.
Doctors say the numbness Murphy felt is one of the classic warning signs of a stroke, and that fast treatment gives a patient the best chance at a full recovery. He got that fast treatment, and by Sunday his team was using the words every family hopes to hear.
Word of support came in quickly on Sunday. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who suffered a stroke during his own campaign in 2022 and went on to win his seat, wished Murphy a full and speedy recovery. Murphy is the latest sitting senator to face a serious health scare in office, a reminder of how quickly the math and the mood in a closely divided Senate can turn on one member’s health.
The timing puts the news in the middle of the final stretch of the midterm elections. Murphy is not on the ballot this year, and his seat does not come up again until 2030. He had spent the fall as one of his party’s busiest surrogates, traveling the country to campaign for Democratic candidates, including in the Georgia governor’s race Urban City Podcast has been following down to the wire. Two days before voters decide control of Congress in races like the Mississippi Senate contest, his party is now waiting on word from Baltimore and hoping the early optimism from his doctors holds.
At 53, Murphy is younger than most of the men and women he serves with in the Senate, and word of a stroke at his age landed hard in Washington on Sunday, where colleagues in both parties sent their well wishes through the day.
Urban City Podcast will update this story as Murphy’s office releases more information about his condition and his recovery.
