Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., told Politico the writing is on the wall: Her party doesn’t want a moderate Democrat like her right now.
“Washington has its ways of letting you know when it’s not your moment,” she said.
After ousting 25-year Republican incumbent John Mica in 2016 in a stunning upset, Murphy’s playbook would later be adopted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and help Democrats flip the House in 2018.
Today, as a co-chair of the House’s Blue Dog Coalition, Murphy champions the voice of moderate Democrats in Congress and sits on the powerful Ways and Means Committee.
She has also frequently challenged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and, in doing so, forced party leaders to listen to moderates’ demands, Politico reports.
But despite her meteoric success, Murphy, 43, is retiring at the end of her term this year.
According to OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan organization that tracks political funding, Murphy is the 22nd Democrat in the House to declare that she is not seeking reelection this cycle.
In an interview with Politico, Murphy said that Democrats have ditched their big-tent mantra since taking over Washington, and that it’s putting their congressional majority at risk.
“My first term … there was a lot more tolerance for, ‘Do what you need to do to hold your seat and come back because we’re trying to build towards [a] majority,’” she said. “With us being in the majority, that tolerance eroded a bit. It’s unfortunate, because I think in order for us as Democrats to hold the majority, you have to be able to win in seats like mine and in redder seats.”
“That means you have to cut your members a little bit of leeway to vote their district,” she continued. “This march towards party unity is going to be detrimental to our ability to lead.”
With the Republican Party “starting to feel more like a cult of personality” to her than a political party, Murphy told Politico she feels stuck between the GOP and the more progressive wing of her party.
“Where are the Reagan conservatives?” she said. “I don’t want to hand this country and the agenda over to a party that’s trying to dismantle democracy. But I also don’t want to hand my party over to the faction that wants to dismantle capitalism. I think both of those forces are dangerous and detrimental to this country.”
When it came to trying to pass President Joe Biden’s progressive agenda, Murphy said Democratic Party leadership tried to “beat moderates into submission.”
“I can’t tell you the number of times I said, ‘You can’t keep promising rainbows and unicorns when your political reality is such narrow margins in the House and a dead-even Senate,’” she said. “They took the difference between rainbows and unicorns and political reality — which is anger and disappointment — and turned that anger and disappointment against their own members.”
Because she wanted to separate the Build Back Better legislation from the infrastructure bill, Murphy told Politico she believes that Democrat leaders were supporting outside-group attacks on vulnerable party members like herself.
“[A] lot of these outside groups that purport to represent a specific interest are just an extension of leadership,” Murphy said. “Instead of purely focusing on their issue area, they bleed into just advocating for whatever Democratic leadership wants.”
When the three-term congresswoman announced her retirement in December, she said she wanted to spend more time with family and find new ways to give back to her country.
"I strongly believe in a citizen Congress, where ordinary citizens run for office in search of duty and service, not in search of a career,” she said in a statement at the time. “And I never intended my time in Congress to become a career.”
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.