Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) announced Monday that she would not be seeking another term in Congress after just five years years on the job.
Murphy is one of 13 House Democrats who have so far announced that they will not run for reelection in 2022. Several others are departing the House to seek higher office. Democrats face an uphill battle to hold the lower chamber in the midterms, in part because Republicans control far more of the redistricting process on the state level.
In a brief video posted to her Twitter account, Murphy acknowledged the surprise some of her constituents might feel at the “retirement” of the 43-year-old congresswoman after just three terms.
“I know this may come as a shock to many of you, for someone to quote-unquote ‘retire’ at my age from Congress — without scandal, without immediately seeking higher office, without fear of losing re-election, or without some lucrative job opportunity,” Murphy said.
“I recognize this is a very rare thing to do in Congress, but I still strongly believe in a citizen Congress, where ordinary citizens run for office in search of duty and service, not in search of a career, and I never intended for my time in Congress to become a career.”
The congresswoman’s reelection chances likely would’ve faced some risk from the once-every-decade redistricting process: though Florida’s new congressional maps haven’t been finalized, one draft proposal from the Republican-controlled state legislature would have simply sliced up the district.
She told Politico: “I am confident that I could win if I ran, but I’m not so arrogant as to believe I’m the only Democrat who can win.”
Murphy was part of a coterie of moderate House Democrats that occasionally threatened President Joe Biden’s agenda with its opposition to the reconciliation bill. Murphy voted against passing the bill out of the House Ways and Means Committee in September, the only Democrat on the committee to do so, saying that its tax provisions gave her “pause.”
She ultimately voted for the bill upon its final passage through the House.
