Murphy begins walking tour of state in Voluntown
Beginning in eastern Connecticut, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., started a six-day walk across the state Monday as a way to meet and talk to constituents.
Starting in Voluntown at midday, Murphy began walking along Route 165, stopping first at a farm stand and then at Buttonwood Farm Ice Cream. He planned to end the day in Norwich.
"My idea is I'll be able to talk to a lot of people over the course of these six days that wouldn't naturally call my office or write ... I'm still relatively new to representing Eastern Connecticut," he said.
He said he was able to learn about issues impacting local businesses, such as some upcoming Environmental Protection Agency rules on wood stove emissions that had the Preston Trading Post, a retailer of wood stoves, concerned.
He would investigate further when he returned to Washington, he said.
At the Preston General Store he chatted with Anjesh Pateli about the state of the casinos in the area, and about his brother and sister in India who hoped to immigrate to the U.S.
His companion through Preston was chairman of the Democratic Town Committee and Board of Education member Sean Nugent, who chatted with him about the mechanics of the deal that would redevelop the former Norwich State Hospital property into the Preston Riverwalk.
In Norwich, Murphy held a Town Hall Monday night at the Greeneville Fire Station. The meeting was the first in a series of evening "pop-up" town halls, his staff said, that would be announced each day around noon depending on the progress the senator had made.
"It's really just my attempt to get to know the state in a different way ... in these town halls I suspect we'll talk about everything from terrorism to immigration to Donald Trump," he said.
His route in the region is scheduled to continue Tuesday from the Greeneville fire station along Route 82 into parts of Bozrah and Montville, before heading into Salem to Route 85 at the roundabout and on to Gillette Castle.
Whether he gets to the state's western border, he said, depends on "what my body will be saying to me two days from now."
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