Patrick Murphy | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromFlorida's18th district | |
| In office January 3, 2013 – January 3, 2017 | |
| Preceded by | Tom Rooney (redistricted) |
| Succeeded by | Brian Mast |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Patrick Erin Murphy (1983-03-30)March 30, 1983 (age 42) |
| Political party | Republican (before 2011) Democratic (2011–present) |
| Spouse | |
| Education | University of Miami (BA) |
Patrick Erin Murphy (born March 30, 1983) is an American businessman, accountant, and politician. ADemocrat, he served as theU.S. representative fromFlorida's 18th congressional district from 2013 to 2017. He is a formerRepublican, having switched parties in 2011.[1]
Murphy was elected to the House of Representatives in2012, defeating Republican incumbentAllen West by 0.8% in the second-most expensive U.S. House race in history.[2] Despite the narrow Republican lean of Murphy's district, he was re-elected with 59.8% of the vote in 2014. In March 2015, he announced his intentions to run in the2016 United States Senate election in Florida; in August 2016 he won the Democratic primary. He faced Republican incumbentMarco Rubio in the November general election, losing 52% to 44%.
Murphy was born in Miami and raised inKey Largo, the son of Tom Murphy Jr., a construction company CEO, and his second wife, Kathleen.[3] Murphy's parents divorced when he was a child, and Murphy was later adopted by his father's third wife, Leslie. Murphy graduated fromPalmer Trinity School in Miami and then went on to take a post-graduate year at theLawrenceville School, a privateprep school inLawrenceville, New Jersey, during the 2001–2002 school year.[4][5]
As a 19-year-old freshman college student in 2003, Murphy was arrested outside aMiami Beach nightclub on charges ofdisorderly intoxication and possessing a fake driver's license. The charges were ultimately dropped. Murphy called the incident "the biggest mistake of my life" and the "biggest learning experience of my life."[6]
Murphy studiedbusiness administration at theUniversity of Miami, earning abachelor's degree with dualmajors in finance and accounting in 2006.[7][8] (In the past, Murphy's official biographies said that he had dual degrees, but in fact he earned a single degree with dual majors; Murphy's campaign said that the error was "inadvertent" and corrected the biographies.[8])
Murphy worked for his family's construction business as a constructionlaborer beginning at age 19, and then in the company's estimating and purchasing departments and as an assistant project engineer.[5]
After college, Murphy worked for his father's business, Coastal Construction, for about a year before spending two and a half years (from September 2007 to May 2010) working as an auditor forDeloitte and Touche in Miami.[5][7][9][10]
After passing theCertified Public Accountant (CPA)examination, he chose to become certified in Colorado, because his degree had insufficient credits to meet Florida's higher education requirement. After obtaining certification in September 2009, he was promoted from "audit assistant" to "audit senior" at Deloitte.[7][9]Politico reported that Murphy had overstated his experience as an accountant, saying he had worked for "several years" as an accountant when in fact he worked as a practicing CPA for less than a year, although he did much of the same accounting work as others at the firm.[11]
He was hired, in May 2010, as vice president of his family's construction business.[12] After the 2010BP oil spill, he was tasked with creating a subsidiary of his father's company, called Coastal Environmental, that secured contracts to remove oil in theGulf of Mexico.[13] Murphy served as vice president of Coastal Environmental,[7][9] and was one of its threedirectors from 2010 to 2012 (after being elected to Congress, Murphy stepped down as a director but remained an owner).[9] As vice president, he ran the company's day-to-day operations for six months, until October 2010, when the Coast Guard called off oil skimming operations in the Gulf.[7][9]PolitiFact.com found that "Murphy's description of his past employment is based on actual circumstances, but at times he omits a full explanation."[9]
A 2011 gift of stock from his father boosted his personal net worth by $1–5 million.[14] His father also gave $100,000 to key Democrats the same year he started to consider running for Congress.[7]
In 2021, Murphy launched an artificial intelligence company for construction estimating calledTogal.AI. In 2023,Construction Dive reported that Togal.AI raised $5 million in a pre-Series A SAFE round with a $50 million valuation cap. The funding was led by Tampa, Florida-based venture capital firm Florida Funders, along with investors including executives from Facebook parent Meta and Goldman Sachs.
In 2012, Murphy moved from Fort Lauderdale to Jupiter and ran for the 18th congressional district.[15] The district had previously been the 16th District, represented byRepublicanTom Rooney. It had historically been one of the more Republican districts in South Florida, having been in Republican hands for all but one term since its creation in 1973 (it had been the 10th from 1973 to 1983, the 12th from 1983 to 1993, and the 16th from 1993 to 2013). However, it had been made significantly more compact in the 2010 round of redistricting, losing most of its heavily Republican western portion to the new17th district. Rooney opted to run in the 17th, leaving the 18th as an open seat.
In the general election, Murphy faced Republican incumbentAllen West, a freshman congressman who ran for reelection in the 18th after his former district, the 22nd, had been made significantly more Democratic in redistricting. In the general election, Murphy said that he was so taken aback by some of the things West was saying in Congress and on television that he felt compelled to run against him.[12][16] West had called Democrats "Communists", said that Social Security was "akin to slavery", and had fired a pistol near a prisoner's head when serving in the Iraq War.[1] Murphy was supported by Florida's former RepublicanGovernorCharlie Crist and former Democratic PresidentBill Clinton, along with RepublicanSheriff ofMartin County Bob Crowder, who ran against West in the primaries.[17][18] The race was among the most expensive congressional races in 2012,[19] and called one of the ugliest in the 2012 campaign, as well as one of the closest.[20]
Murphy was officially certified as the victor over West several days after the election, with a margin of 2,429 votes. West initially indicated that his campaign would seek to challenge the results, but he conceded defeat after Murphy's victory became apparent.[21][22][23]
Murphy ran for re-election in 2014, and was a member of theDemocratic Congressional Campaign Committee's Frontline program, designed to protect their most vulnerable incumbents.[24] Despite this, he won his bid for a second term by defeating Republican candidateCarl Domino, a former State Representative, 60% to 40%,[25] even out-polling Republican GovernorRick Scott in the heavily RepublicanMartin County, which he carried with 55.4% of the vote.[26] He raised and spent over $5.3 million, more than any other House Democrat who ran for re-election. Of his 13 television advertisements, none of them attacked his Republican opponent.[26]
Murphy was formerly a member of the Republican Party, donating the maximum individual contribution of $2,300 toMitt Romney's2008 presidential campaign and $4,800 to other Republican candidates. Four months prior to announcing his candidacy for Congress, Murphy switched hisregistration to the Democratic Party and donated $4,000 to a variety of Democratic candidates.[27] He says he switched from being a Republican and a Romney supporter because of his disgust with theTea Party movement, also citing his opponent Allen West's fiery rhetoric.[28]
Murphy is regarded as one of the more moderate Democrats in Florida's congressional delegation; he describes himself as "fiscally responsible, socially progressive."[5] He was described inThe Huffington Post as a "pro-choice, pro-LGBT rights but 'not ultra-liberal' Democrat who values fiscal responsibility."[12] The top five contributors to his campaign committee for the 2013-2014 time period were his family's construction company, professional services firmDeloitte, plumbing company Suntech Plumbing, multinational investment banking firmGoldman Sachs, and thePAC of the liberal foreign policy organizationJ Street.[29]
At the time he first took office in 2013, Murphy was the youngest member of the House of Representatives, at age 29.[5]
Murphy has been chair of twobipartisan organizations, the United Solutions Caucus andNo Labels.[30] In 2023, President Joe Biden appointed Murphy to the President's Export Council], a White House Advisory committee overseeing international trade.[31]
Murphy condemned the congressional Republicans who forced agovernment shutdown in 2013 and criticized theTea Party Republicans who orchestrated the shutdown, writing their threat to force the U.S. intodefault was irresponsible. He cited the economic damage caused by the shutdown and the interruption to government operations.[30] He did not take his pay during the shutdown, donating it instead to a wounded veterans' organization in his home district.[32]
In 2014 Murphy was one of 36 members of Congress to sign a letter urging theU.S. House Appropriations Committee to block aU.S. Department of Education proposal to tighten regulation offor-profit universities.[33]
In 2013 Murphy voted in support of the Northern Route Approval Act, which would have allowed Congress to unilaterally approve construction of theKeystone Pipeline without the approval of theObama administration.[34]
Murphy accepts thescientific consensus on climate change and has consistently supported action tocombat climate change.[35][36] He has called for action againsttoxic algal blooms insouth Florida waters.[36] He opposeshydraulic fracturing (fracking) and has voted against a proposal to block federal regulations on fracking.[37] However, he believes thatnatural gas is a bridge fuel fromfossil fuels torenewable energy, and has voted to expedite export approval forliquified natural gas, prompting criticism from some environmentalists.[37]
As of August 2016, Murphy received an 80% lifetime voting rating from theLeague of Conservation Voters (LCV), an environmental group; this score was "lower than all but one Florida Democrat in the House but higher than all Florida Republicans."[37] The LCV endorsed Murphy in the 2016 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.[36]
Murphy supports the gradualnormalization of relations between Cuba and the United States.[38]
In 2014, Murphy broke with most of his party when he became one of seven House Democrats to vote in favor of establishing theUnited States House Select Committee on Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi.[39]
Murphy supports theAffordable Care Act and voted against its repeal in May 2013.[40] However, in November 2013, he signed on to a Republican-sponsored bill to waive the minimum coverage requirements of the act.[41]
On March 23, 2015, Murphy ran for the U.S. Senate in 2016. Incumbent Republican SenatorMarco Rubio unsuccessfullysought the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, and had initially said he would vacate the seat. However, after dropping out of the presidential race, Rubio reversed himself and decided to run for re-election.[42] The Democratic primary race was contentious and occasionally negative,[43] with Murphy and fellow Democratic CongressmanAlan Grayson diverging "occasionally in policy, but drastically in personality."[44] Murphy defeated Grayson in the August 30 primary.[45]
Murphy's father, Thomas Murphy Jr., and the family's construction company contributed $500,000 in early 2016 to a pro-Murphysuper PAC, Floridians for a Strong Middle Class. The elder Murphy subsequently gave an additional $1 million to Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC supporting a number of Democratic Senate candidates, including Murphy.[46][47][48]
Murphy and Rubio participated in two debates in October 2016. During the debates, Rubio criticized Murphy's background. Murphy responded by saying "You continue to throw out these lies. They have all been debunked by PolitiFact."PolitiFact responded that "Murphy has exaggerated his credentials, and his opponents have also exaggerated their attacks on Murphy."[49]
Murphy was defeated by Rubio in the general election, 52% to 44%.[50]
Murphy is aRoman Catholic[51] and is ofIrish Catholic heritage.[52] He married model Samantha Drew in 2022.[53][54]
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | Patrick Murphy | 166,799 | 50.4 | +4.7 | |
| Republican | Allen West (incumbent) | 164,370 | 49.6 | −4.7 | |
| Turnout | 331,169 | 100 | |||
| Democraticgain fromRepublican | Swing | ||||
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | Patrick Murphy (incumbent) | 151,478 | 59.8 | +9.4 | |
| Republican | Carl Domino | 101,896 | 40.2 | −9.4 | |
| Turnout | 253,374 | 100 | |||
| Democratichold | |||||
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republican | Marco Rubio (incumbent) | 4,822,182 | 52.0% | +3.1 | |
| Democratic | Patrick Murphy | 4,105,251 | 44.3% | +24.1 | |
| Libertarian | Paul Stanton | 196,188 | 2.1% | +1.7 | |
| U.S. House of Representatives | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromFlorida's 18th congressional district 2013–2017 | Succeeded by |
| Honorary titles | ||
| Preceded by | Baby of the House 2013–2015 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Democratic nominee forU.S. Senator fromFlorida (Class 3) 2016 | Succeeded by |
| U.S. order of precedence (ceremonial) | ||
| Preceded byas Former U.S. Representative | Order of precedence of the United States as Former U.S. Representative | Succeeded byas Former U.S. Representative |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
