Republican Lee Murphy faced incumbent Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester in Thursday’s Delaware Debates hosted by Delaware Public Media and the University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s proposal for a national 15-week abortion ban featured prominently in the debate, with Blunt Rochester expressing support for codifying the right to abortion nationally in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Murphy says he supports the Supreme Court’s decision, but seemingly suggested he would not support McCarthy’s national abortion restrictions on the grounds that abortion regulations should be left to the states – though, when pressed, he did not make his position explicit.
“I think constitutionally, the Supreme Court was right – it is a state issue," he said. "It’s where people can make their voices heard, and each state can make their individual decisions about what it right for each state.”
Though Murphy periodically went on the attack, the two candidates also found a few points of agreement; notably, both candidates said they would not support wholly eliminating the federal debt ceiling.
Congress sets and adjusts the debt ceiling; as the federal government edged close to surpassing the limit last fall – escalating the risk of default – lawmakers agreed to temporarily raise the debt ceiling to avoid a crisis, but discussions began to swirl among some Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, about eliminating the ceiling altogether to avoiding a cycle of partisan showdowns and temporary federal shutdowns. This fall, Congressional Republicans have vowed to use the federal debt ceiling to curb President Biden’s spending on climate change and social programs.
Blunt Rochester says she opposes eliminating the debt ceiling, arguing Congress should instead focus on finding funding sources for major federal spending projects; Blunt Rochester has previously voiced support for a federal wealth tax.
“I think it is important for us to be fiscally responsible. That’s why I shared on the last bill – the Inflation Reduction Act – that we should find a way to pay for that, unlike the Trump Tax Cuts, when there was no way to pay for that," she said.
Murphy not only stood by the debt ceiling but expressed support for substantial federal spending cuts. As a House candidate in 2020, Murphy criticized Congressional COVID relief spending as unnecessary and irresponsible.
On some issues of more local concern, the candidates vaguely gestured in the same direction. Asked by moderator Ralph Begleiter about federal interventions in the escalating national housing shortage, both Murphy and Blunt Rochester acknowledged that affordable housing supply has not been able to keep pace with demand in Delaware — especially in booming Sussex County. Blunt Rochester pointed to her efforts to bring federal dollars to Delaware for homeless services and affordable housing developers like Habitat for Humanity, while Murphy pointed to inflation reduction writ large as a key step towards bringing housing prices down.
Both Blunt Rochester and Murphy also expressed willingness to reconsider the federal flood insurance program's subsidies for homeowners in areas impacted by rising sea levels and other symptoms of climate change, though neither said they think the subsidies should be rolled back entirely. "I believe there are families in our state who are living in areas where they do deserve to have that flood insurance," Blunt Rochester said.
But some key questions from the debate remain largely unanswered: namely whether Murphy has confidence in the results of the 2020 election. When pressed on the subject, he remarked that there were "concerns over the integrity and transparency of that election" that undermined voters' trust, but he declined to comment directly on whether he believed the election results were legitimate.
Delaware Public Media's Election Coverage is supported in part by a grant from Delaware Humanities, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities and NEH’s special initiative “A More Perfect Union." The “A More Perfect Union” initiative supports projects that explore, reflect on, and tell the stories of our quest for a more just, inclusive, and sustainable society throughout our history.
