Lawmaker Using Exile as Platform
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
No one had to put Charley Murphy’s desk out in the hall, but they might as well have.
In December, Murphy resigned as House majority whip, one step ahead of the political firing squad that was about to follow Speaker Robert DeLeo’s marching orders and remove him from the post. It was a steep fall for the eight-term Burlington lawmaker, who had served two years as chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee before his stint as majority whip.
But the hard-charging ex-Marine is trying to turn his exile to State House Siberia into a platform for stirring things up in a House where dissent is as rare as a Friday session in August. Murphy, who angered DeLeo by discussing with colleagues his own designs on the speaker’s post, has joined with Republicans (and only two other Democrats) in signing a pledge to allow more bills to be debated and not kept bottled up by House leaders.
