FRANKLIN - Chris Murphy is in the middle of a sentence walking down Route 32, when a man driving a white pickup truck slows and rolls down his window to call out the attention of the junior senator from Connecticut. 

"How's it going senator?" the driver yells, his voice lowering once he sees Murphy is listening. "Can we stop sending money to Ukraine, and start bringing jobs back here instead?"

Leaning into the window of the now stopped truck, Murphy responds quickly and politely - "We should talk (about) that at some point, we can do both" —  before waving the man goodbye.

Murphy, who is facing reelection in November, knows he does not need to convince many voters like the man in the pickup in order to secure another six-year term in Washington, D.C. Democrats like him have a nearly two-to-one advantage in voter registration, and have not lost a U.S. Senate race since the late 1980s.

He also knows that the expectation from many circles — both within the state and from his colleagues in Congress — is that he will share both his own time and some of the more than $11 million he has amassed in his campaign war chest to support Democratic candidates running in tougher districts.

Already this year, Murphy's campaign has contributed $10,000 to Democratic Senate candidates in Delaware, Arizona and Texas. In 2022, his campaign gave $150,000 to the House Majority PAC and $11,600 to the state party.

"Connecticut will do much better if Joe Biden is president and Democrats control the Senate," Murphy said. "If I am helping Joe Biden win, if I’m helping some of my Democratic colleagues win their senate races, I think I’m also doing what’s right for the state."

As the senator completed of his annual walk across Connecticut on Wednesday, he invited CT Insider to join him along a stretch through rural Franklin, in the southeast corner of the state. Murphy has completed the walk each year since beginning in 2015 — interrupted only once by the pandemic and a knee surgery, after which he has stuck to shorter north-south routes. 

The location is perhaps symbolic for Murphy, who turned heads last year when he made a trek to Appalachia to discuss an "epidemic of loneliness" that he fears is gripping more scattered regions of the country. At Emely's Pizza Restaurant, he chats with regulars Karen and Pam Fuller about the loss of spaces such as the restaurant's busy dining room, where neighbors can come to gather.

The Fullers, a mother and daughter, both seem to agree as they heap equal praise on the senator and the food at Emely's, which Karen proclaims is "God's gift to this part of part of the world."

"There’s no way that I won Franklin in the last election, I probably got skunked here," Murphy said with a laugh later. (In fact, he eked out a narrow victory, winning 488 to 435.) 

"But that’s your job, is to listen to everyone," he added.

Murphy’s potential rivals in this fall’s election, Beacon Falls First Selectman Gerry Smith and Manchester businessman Matthew Corey, have cast the Democratic senator as an out-of-touch career politician who tows the line on Biden administration policies. Both Republicans will face off in an August primary to determine the nominee. 

"At the end of the day, you have a Democratic White House and a Democrat-controlled Senate, and their compromise seems to be, 'It's our way or nothing,'" said Connecticut Republican Party Chairman Ben Proto. 

Those criticisms don’t appear to have phased Murphy, who said he does not plan to spend much time in the coming months engaging with either candidate.

Instead, he said he will focus on championing policies such as the lowering of prescription drug prices through the Inflation Reduction Act, which has also delivered billions of dollars in federal funding to Connecticut. Murphy added that he plans to spend a lot of time campaigning with Democratic U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes in the state’s hotly-contested 5th Congressional District, which he represented for six years before joining the Senate.

Murphy said that his relationship with Biden’s White House is different from when he was a freshman senator during former President Barack Obama’s second term. Part of the reason for the change, he said, is because he has taken on a bigger role, brokering deals with Republicans such as the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which ended a nearly three-decade impasse on federal gun control policies in Congress. 

When asked if the president spends enough time talking up those achievements, Murphy responded diplomatically. 

"Being president is hard, you can't be messaging all the time," Murphy said. "There's still a lot going on in the country that he has to attend to, he's obviously managing several crisises overseas. So I'm careful not to criticize the president for not messaging enough on X issue or Y issue."

Still, he acknowledges that Biden is "going to need to do more" to address what Murphy called a mismatch between economic data showing modest growth and low unemployment and the feelings of unhappiness and anxiety that he continuously hears from people he meets along his walk. "Demagogues prey upon people’s sh---- feelings," he said. 

One issue that Murphy said has steadily grown in prominence since he began his walks nearly a decade ago is the rising cost of housing in Connecticut that has resulted, in part, due to a chronic shortfall of new construction.

Murphy said he wants to work with the Senate to increase federal funding to develop new affordable housing, though he also acknowledged the issue is a challenging one to address from Washington. 

"I think the biggest problem in Connecticut is NIMBYism, not financing," Murphy said. "But there are solutions that are available and I should probably use my bully pulpit more to try and get Connecticut to do more to streamline its local permitting process." 

In the Senate, Murphy currently sits on the Appropriations, Foreign Relations and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committees, though he lacks a coveted chairmanship for the time being.  

As a result of those assignments and his own self-appointed role as a bipartisan deal maker, Murphy has found himself increasingly at the center of national debates over immigration and America's involvement in supplying foreign military aid to Israel and Ukraine. In the process, he’s attracted both praise and his own fair share of critics, as evidenced by the man in the white pickup.

That interaction, like most Murphy says he has with residents during his annual walks, ended respectfully with a wave. It's a degree of civility that Murphy hopes to bring back with him to Washington, where bipartisan compromises have become stubbornly elusive. 

"I am looking forward to being a little bit more nimble in my third term, and trying to be one of the folks who makes the Senate work and is able to bring people together."