Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) was hospitalized and experienced a stroke on Saturday, his office said.
Murphy, 53, started feeling numbness in his arm while attending his son’s hockey game on Halloween. He was taken to a hospital “where it was discovered he had experienced a stroke,” his office said.
“He was transferred to Johns Hopkins for further monitoring and is responding well to treatment,” the statement continued. “The doctors are encouraged by his progress, he is awake and alert, and we are optimistic he will make a full recovery.”
Several members of Congress have experienced strokes in recent years, and have, in some cases, returned to work soon after.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) suffered a near-fatal stroke as he was running for Senate in 2022, which required doctors to remove a blood clot. The same year, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) experienced what he called a “minor stroke,” at age 63, with symptoms of lightheadedness and acute neck pain. Van Hollen was hospitalized for a week and returned to work shortly after. Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-New Mexico) also made a full recovery after experiencing a stroke in the cerebellum, at 49, in 2022; he came back to the Senate the following month.
And then-Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) had a serious stroke in 2012 at age 52. He returned to the Senate after nearly a year of rehabilitation, climbing the Senate steps to bipartisan applause. He served for nearly four more years before losing reelection in 2016.
Before the stroke, Murphy, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, was crisscrossing the country to appear with candidates in competitive midterm races — including recent stops in North Carolina, Florida, Michigan and Minnesota. He had been set to join two Democratic candidates, Rep. Chris Pappas, who is running for Senate, and Stefany Shaheen, who is running for the House, in New Hampshire on Sunday.
Murphy is a longtime politician, holding various offices since 1998, when he was elected to his state House of Representatives while still a student. After serving two terms as a state House member, he was elected to the state Senate and then the U.S. House of Representatives. He became a U.S. senator in 2013.
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