Patty was born and raised in Bothell, Washington where she grew up with her parents and six siblings—including a twin sister. Her father managed a Main Street 5 and 10 cent store, where she worked growing up and first learned the value of strong work ethic. When Patty was a young teenager, her father—a World War II veteran and Purple Heart recipient—was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and in a few short years, his illness got so bad he could no longer work. Patty’s mother, who had stayed home to raise their family, had to take care of him while also working to support their family. She found some work, but it didn’t pay enough to support Patty and her six brothers and sisters—and a husband with growing medical bills. Thankfully, they lived in a country where the government didn’t just say “you’re on your own.”
Washington state is proud to be a national leader in agriculture. Our farmers, growers, and ranchers are critical to our state’s economy, environment, and quality of life. Senator Murray knows farmers and growers face constant challenges – from difficult market conditions and extreme weather to natural disasters and high input costs. She has consistently fought in Washington, D.C. for agricultural producers and farmworkers, and will continue to work to ensure farmers have access to domestic and international markets for their high-quality products.
In addition to supporting Washington state’s agricultural businesses, Senator Murray understands that its rural communities have unique needs when it comes to housing, internet access, health care and more. She continues to work to ensure that farmworkers and rural communities have the support and opportunities they need to succeed.
Senator Murray believes that the right to vote is essential to making sure our democracy stays a democracy. The ability for people to use their voice to vote and have a say in our government is foundational, and that means people have to have the power in our elections—not special interests, dark money, or just those at the very top. Senator Murray is working to use every legislative tool available, including an exemption to the filibuster, to strengthen voting rights and assure every American’s right to have their voice heard in our democracy.
Equal protection under the law is also foundational to our country. This is why Senator Murray works to end all forms of discrimination and ensure that everyone has equal opportunities regardless of race, religion, national origin, age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
Senator Murray has made her commitment to racial justice in America clear. She believes that racial injustice and violence against Black people and other communities of color—from unfair lending practices and redlining of Black neighborhoods to egregious and painful instances of police brutality—continue to present real and ongoing challenges that demand action. That’s why in all of her work—from health care to education to workers’ rights—she prioritizes examining and eradicating systemic racism and discrimination which has too often led to communities of color, Indigenous people, people with disabilities, and the LGBTQIA+ community being left behind.
Senator Murray has also been commended a leader in the Senate for her efforts to bring diversity of background and professional experience to the federal bench, working to build faith in our institutions and ensure our courts are more reflective of the communities they serve.
Washington state is on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Senator Murray believes there is no greater challenge facing our country and our world, and that we have to meet this moment with the urgency it demands by making bold investments in addressing climate change. She has consistently fought to preserve the natural beauty and wonders of Washington state for current and future generations to enjoy.
Senator Murray has pushed for a clean energy initiative across the board, and supports efforts to rapidly decrease emissions and get to net zero emissions as quickly as possible. She sees the climate crisis as one that’s urgent, but also an historic opportunity to make investments in clean energy—such as solar and wind—while creating good paying, union jobs. She’s pushed to make investing in clean energy affordable and easier for families and businesses across Washington state and the country, as well as electrifying our nation’s school buses and transportation systems.
Senator Murray believes that central to all of these efforts must be a commitment to a whole-of-government approach to develop programs and policies that address the disproportionate health, environmental, economic and climate impacts on communities that have too often been left behind.
Hanford workers and the Tri-Cities community sacrificed to help America win World War II and the Cold War. Senator Murray has worked hard in the U.S. Senate to ensure that the federal government meets its moral and legal obligation to clean up Hanford as well as similar nuclear waste sites throughout the country. She has pushed for more resources for Hanford workers and to ensure they can obtain the full benefits they’re entitled to when they’ve contracted illnesses as a result of workplace exposure and will always advocate for Hanford’s workers in the U.S. Senate.
As a former preschool and community college teacher, school board member, and parent advocate, education is what got Senator Murray into politics in the first place. She has never stopped fighting to put students first and make sure they have the opportunity to succeed. Senator Murray believes that every student deserves a high-quality public K-12 education and access to affordable, debt-free opportunities for higher education. She is fighting to ensure all students can learn in safe and supportive learning environments free from discrimination, bullying, and harassment, and she passionately believes that investing in education is about giving the next generation the tools they need to grow, learn, and thrive.
Senator Murray is committed to making sure all students have access to a high quality, affordable college education. For so many students and families, particularly from low-income households, a college degree can lead to upward mobility. However, the high price of college is a barrier to many students pursuing their dreams. As our nation’s students continue to face a student debt crisis, Senator Murray is committed to tackling the high cost of college and ensuring all students can access and obtain a higher education.
Having seen it firsthand, Senator Murray believes our nation’s workforce development programs and lifelong learning opportunities are important to provide workers with pathways to good-paying jobs. One of the reasons her family was able to make it through hard times was because her mother was able to go back to school, get training, and ultimately, a higher-paying job. Senator Murray is committed to making sure these programs are high-quality and available to more workers so people can stay competitive and grow in the careers they have or develop new skills to pursue new career paths.
Senator Murray believes that everyone in this country should be able to get the health care they need without worrying about the cost. To do that, she’s focused on bold solutions to:
Health care is so much more than just whether families have quality, affordable health insurance. That’s why Senator Murray also champions strong investments in community health centers, the health care workforce, biomedical research, health equity, and our public health infrastructure. Making and maintaining these investments is critical to ensuring our nation is able to fight diseases, respond to public health emergencies, and keep all of our families and communities healthy and safe.
Senator Murray is a fierce champion of reproductive rights and is committed to defending Roe v. Wade as the law of the land. She believes that everyone should be able to get the reproductive health care they need—including family planning services and safe, legal abortion. She does not shy away from fighting back against extreme Republican attempts to chip away at the right to abortion that make it impossible for patients—especially people of color and people who are paid low incomes—to get the care they want.
Senator Murray believes that safe, stable housing shouldn’t be a privilege in the United States of America—and the dream of owning your own home, let alone making rent, shouldn’t feel so ridiculously out of reach for so many people. Senator Murray is also acutely focused on ensuring that everyone in Washington state can be housed and that everyone has access to safe, emergency housing should they need it.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Senator Murray pushed for a strong response to the immediate need, which was to prioritize public health by keeping people in their homes and ensuring access to emergency housing for those who were unhoused. In Congress, Senator Murray championed major investments in rental assistance and many other programs and supports to help get and keep people and housed while fighting the COVID-19 virus. Senator Murray is committed to building on this work to strengthen families’ and individuals’ ability to access safe, stable, secure housing—and stay there. She’s also focused on how the federal government can be a partner in the collective work to dismantle systemic barriers in housing that have long disadvantaged people of color and other vulnerable communities.
Immigrants are an important part of our communities in Washington state and around the country, making valuable contributions to every aspect of American life. But because of our country’s broken immigration system, men, women, and children are forced to live in the shadows as Americans in all but name. Families and businesses alike are trapped in a broken system that isn’t working for anyone.
Senator Murray believes we need to adopt immigration reform legislation that offers a fair pathway to citizenship for the more than 11 million undocumented residents living here, including Dreamers, farmworkers, those with temporary protected status, and the many essential, undocumented workers who do so much to keep our country running, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is working to bring dignity and humanity to our immigration system—from protecting the health and safety of immigrant workers, to recognizing and bolstering America’s historical commitment to refugees, promoting immigration as an integral part of our communities, and more.
When workers succeed, our businesses, our economy, and our country succeeds. That’s why Senator Murray is focused on supporting working families, creating jobs, and growing the economy in Washington state. She believes we need an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the very top.
As the Chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Senator Murray is leading the efforts to strengthen workers’ rights, raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, end subminimum wages for tipped workers, youth workers, and workers with disabilities, establish a national paid leave program, and protect the right of workers to collectively bargain and unionize, including by leading the fight for the PRO Act in the Senate. She is a strong supporter and advocate of unions, and believes they can make all the difference in ensuring good benefits and safe working conditions for workers across the country.
Senator Murray also recognizes the extreme inequities that persist in our economy. From closing the wage gap, to fighting income inequality, to protecting workers with disabilities, Senator Murray is committed to addressing these inequities and creating a fairer economy for everyone. She will continue to fight to ensure every worker gets the wages, benefits, working conditions, and support they need and deserve.
Keeping families across Washington state and the country safe is one of Senator Murray’s top priorities. And as the daughter of a World War II veteran and a voice in the U.S. Senate for our servicemembers, military families, and veterans in Washington state, she has long championed federal efforts to help keep our nation safe and ensure our women and men in uniform, as well as their families, are taken care of and have the resources and support they need to defend our freedoms. It is Senator Murray’s strong belief that Congress has an obligation to reassert its authority over questions of war and peace and conduct meaningful oversight in matters of national security.
She also believes firmly that an essential part of protecting our national security is working toward greater justice, equality and opportunity at home, which requires reassessing our federal spending priorities to ensure every community, particularly those that have long been disadvantaged by our nation’s laws and policies, has the federal support they need to thrive.
Senator Murray believes the United States should be a leader on the world stage and set an example as it relates to human rights—from supporting our allies, to standing up for the safety, security, and opportunity of women and girls, to protecting the humanity and dignity of refugees and asylum seekers, and ending the sale of weapons of war to bad actors.
Senator Murray believes that working families are the backbone of our economy and that when they succeed, our businesses, communities, and economy succeeds. By investing in working families, she is helping build an economy that works for everyone—not just those at the top.
One of Senator Murray’s top priorities in the Senate is to address our nation’s child care crisis. She hears all the time from working parents across Washington state and the country about the challenges they face when it comes to finding quality, affordable child care—and for so many women, and in particular, women of color, it’s why they’ve been forced to quit their jobs, struggled to support their families, or struggled to grow their careers. Senator Murray is committed to doing everything she can to ensure families can find affordable care, child care providers can keep their doors open and earn a livable wage, and children can get an early education that can help them thrive.
Senator Murray has long fought to support families by guaranteeing paid sick, family, and medical leave. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted just how costly our lack of a national paid leave program and paid sick days policy was for workers, families, businesses, and our country. Senator Murray is working hard to make sure we’re no longer a country that forces workers to make the impossible decision between a paycheck and staying home to care for themselves or a sick family member.
Senator Murray believes that after a lifetime of hard work, older Americans deserve to enjoy their later years with dignity and financial independence. She will always fight to make sure our country is living up to the promise of Social Security and Medicare and will protect those important lifelines. Senator Murray is working to expand critical programs for seniors and families who need it most—such as Medicare and Medicaid, including home- and community-based services, and other supportive services like caregiving and home-delivered meals. She will continue working to make sure older Americans have affordable health care, secure housing, a safe, stable financial future, and the support they need and deserve. Senator Murray knows that seniors make up an important part of our nation’s middle class, and she will continue to make sure more seniors in Washington state and across the country have access to a secure retirement.
Safe, efficient, and modern transportation is critical to Washington state communities and our economy. That’s why Senator Murray has worked to secure billions in federal investments toward public transportation and infrastructure so that Washington state can keep moving forward.
Senator Murray will keep pushing for investments in roads, bridges, transit, rail, airports, and ports to make sure people across Washington state can get to where they need to go—and to support the businesses that rely on this infrastructure each and every day. Ultimately, she is fighting to fix our aging infrastructure and ensure the federal government is supporting Washington state’s substantial investments in public transit to reduce emissions, increase accessibility, and mitigate congestion. Moving forward, Senator Murray is focused on ensuring the federal government implements transportation policy that makes racial and environmental justice a priority, and will work to directly remedy the historical inequities that exist – particularly around access to transit for historically underserved populations.
Central to investing in Washington state’s transportation and infrastructure are our efforts to address the climate crisis and make our state’s transportation greener. Senator Murray is pushing for investments in clean energy, like investing in electric vehicles, buses, and ferries. She’s also pushing for more investments in public transit to lessen the load of cars on our roads. Finally, she’s fighting to prioritize climate resiliency so that our roads, bridges, and other infrastructure can withstand the increasing frequency of extreme weather events we’re confronted by as a result of the ongoing climate crisis.
Senator Murray believes that our nation’s Tribes are an integral part of our history, culture and future—especially in her home state of Washington. She is proud to be a voice in the U.S. Senate for Washington state’s Tribal governments and communities and works to make sure our nation lives up to its promises to support Tribal health care, education, natural resources, and more.
As the country reckons with our long history of systemic racism, Senator Murray is committed to making sure Congress listens to and priorities Tribal voices and interest in policymaking, and reflects on its part in the federal government’s historic violence and racial injustice specifically against Native Americans.
As the daughter of a World War II veteran and a senior member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Senator Murray is committed to making sure our country fulfills its promise to care for our veterans long after they return home from duty. She knows the sacrifices that veterans and their families have made and continue to make, and she’ll keep fighting for them as their voice in the other Washington.
Senator Murray has fought for increased benefits, housing assistance, new veterans clinics throughout Washington state, and more accountability from the Department of Veterans Affairs. She believes the country should do more to increase education opportunities, expand employment assistance, address the mental and physical trauma servicemembers may experience, and reduce wait times for veterans with pending claims or appeals. She is focused on helping women veterans overcome the unique obstacles they face to getting care and services, while also fighting to help make sure veterans can live independently while receiving the care they need. Senator Murray works closely with leaders in Washington state and across the country to make sure military families are supported during their service with quality housing, paid parental leave, and affordable child care.
Senator Murray knows our nation is faced with a growing global demand for energy, a severe reliance upon fossil fuels, and environmental concerns surrounding many of our current energy supplies. It will take American innovation and smart policies that encourage conservation, energy efficiency, and increased renewable energy research, development, and deployment to address the critical issue of climate change and create a comprehensive national energy policy.
Senator Murray has consistently fought for legislation that protects our environment and supports the unique resources and quality of life enjoyed in Washington state. She believes that environmental protection is compatible with long-term economic growth, and has joined with local leaders to protect our state’s environment and natural resources, enhance recreational opportunities in the region, and promote innovative, locally-based approaches.
Hanford workers and the Tri-Cities community sacrificed to help America win World War II and the Cold War, and Senator Murray has worked hard in the U.S. Senate to ensure that the federal government meets its moral and legal obligation to clean up Hanford as well as similar nuclear waste sites throughout the country. As a senior member of the Senate Budget Committee and the Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, Senator Murray has led efforts to increase resources for Hanford cleanup and to ensure that it is being done safely. Each year the President’s proposed budget falls short of what is needed to continue to make progress at Hanford, and each year Senator Murray pushes back against proposed cuts. Senator Murray will continue to fight to ensure this critical work stays on track.
Equal protection under the law is a fundamental right in our country. Senator Murray believes in the basic principle that no one should endure discrimination because of their race, religion, national origin, age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Whether applying for a job, finding a home, attending school, or voting in an election, Senator Murray is focused on ensuring that all citizens are treated fairly and equally.
Senator Murray believes strongly that when women succeed, our country succeeds. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992, the so-called “Year of the Woman” when women gained a record six U.S. Senate seats, Senator Murray has been focused throughout her career on expanding opportunity for women in Washington state and across the country. From helping break down barriers women face in the workplace to standing up for a woman’s constitutionally guaranteed right to make her own decisions about her own body, Senator Murray has fought hard for women’s rights and health, and she’ll keep fighting to ensure women’s voices are heard in Congress.