Stephen J. Murphy is an American politician who has served as Suffolk County's register of deeds, since 2017. From 1997 until 2016, he served as an at-large member of the Boston City Council. He was president of the council in 2011 and 2012. He is a member of the Democratic Party.
Early life, education, and early career
Born in Dorchester and raised in Hyde Park. His mother, Marjorie, worked as a teacher’s aide for Boston Public Schools. His father, Stephen, was an attorney and a former Boston Police Department officer.
Murphy worked for a transit company, eventually being promoted up[citation needed] to vice president. He held this job until the mid 1980s, when he began working in state government.
Early government work and politics
In the mid-1980s, Murphy began working in state government. He first worked in the State Senate as Director of Constituent Services for Senate President William M. Bulger and then worked on budget matters in the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office. He next worked as the Assistant Personnel Director of the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth's Office.
Murphy's first campaign for public office was an unsuccessful campaign for the Boston School Committee.
Boston City Council (1997–2016)
From February 1997 until January 2016, Murphy was an at-large member of the Boston City Council. After serving a partial term on the council in 1997, he served nine two-year terms.
During his time on the council, he served three years as council president (three consecutive one-year terms in 2011, 2012, and 2013).
Unsuccessful 1995 candidacy; partial term in 1997
Murphy had finished fifth in the November 1995 race for four at-large seats, failing to win election. However, in February 1997, Richard P. Iannella resigned his at-large seat after being elected Suffolk County register of probate. Since Boston's charter offers the first-runner-up in the at-large election the right of first refusal to assume any vacant at-large seats, Murphy was able to assume the seat vacated by Ianella and complete his term.
Served as chair of the Committee on Public Safety during this first term. As committee chair, he led hearings where he and other council members probed matter of underage drinking college students and means of closing de facto loopholes that facilitated the purchase of alcohol by those under the legal drinking age.
Second third, and fourth terms (1998–2003)
Murphy elected to a full two-year term as an at-large councilor in November 1997. He would go on to be re-elected eight times thereafter, including to a third term in 1999 and a fourth term in in 2001.
In 2004, Murphy issued a proposal to restructure the way universities reimburse the city for services, urging for them to pay the city more.
In an effort to decrease excessive alcohol consumption, particularly by Boston-area university students, Murphy proposed an ordinance to require Boston liquor stores to require not just proof of identification but also proof of address for keg sales, and to report the name, age, and addresses of all keg purchasers to the Boston Police Department. It was hoped that, if enacted, this would allow police to counter parties with underage drinking.
2004 Suffolk County Sheriff campaign
Murphy unsuccessfully ran for Suffolk County Sheriff in 2004.
Steve Murphy, as committee chair, called for changes to smoke detector laws.
Murphy opposed a lateral transfer initiative for the police department. As a councilor, Murphy also worked over the years with Mayor Menino to expand the hiring of new police officers and firemen.
Murphy sponsored the city's CORI reform ordinance.
Murphy and Councilor Michael P. Ross filed an ordinance in December 2011 that would have prevented the city clerk from collecting fees from the filing of wedding certificates.
Murphy was re-elected to a ninth council term in 2011.
In late-December 2012, Murphy announced he had secured pledges of enough votes to secure a third term as council president, and on January 7, 2013, he was re-elected to serve an additional one-year term as council president. With Mayor Thomas Menino's health publicly known to be ailing by 2013, this final council president term of Murphy was seen as carrying greater-than-usual potential odds of seeing him ascend to the mayoralty (Boston's council presidents are first-in-line to serve as acting mayor in the case of mayoralty vacancies). However, Murphy expressed public confidence in January that not only would Menino finish his current term, but would also seek re-election. Murphy was successful in securing his third council presidency term.
Murphy was a champion of the cancelled Indigo Line transit project, hailing transit oriented development he expected to see arise around eight planned stations between Hyde Park and Back Bay. He touted that this development could provide needed additional affordable housing to the city.
In late 2012, Murphy sponsored an unsuccessful ordinance to redirect many 911 calls from triggering a police response to instead triggering a firefighter EMS response.
In 2013, introduced an ordinance to ban anyone under 18 from attending UFC events held in the city. The propped ordinance attracted criticism from prominent UFC figures, including its President Dana White, and was defeated.
In 2013, Murphy openly considered running for mayor after Mayor Menino made a surprise announcement in late March that he would not be seeking re-election to the office. A crowded field was emerging. With an April 17 filing deadline, Murphy had a very limited timeline to decide whether he would run for mayor. A mayoral campaign would likely have meant forgoing a run for a tenth consecutive in the simultaneous council election. A run for mayor would also likely have prevented Murphy from fieding a bid for state treasurer in 2014, as if elected he would take office as mayor that year, and if he ran but lost he might have trouble recovering from the blow of a mayoral election defeat. However, if he were re-elected to the city council, he would be preserving his chances of fielding a formidable 2014 state treasurer run.
At the start of April, Murphy noted that he feared the possibility that he could come to regret not running if Menino were to resign early from the mayoralty prior to the election (but too late for Murphy to launch a ballot-qualified candidacy); noting that an early resignation would make him (as council president) the new acting mayor, and that (if a candidate) he could leverage the advantages of an acting mayoral incumbency to boost his prospects of being elected mayor (Menino himself had who would be rendered a mere caretaker mayor (a "footnote in Boston history", per Murphy’s description) if he became acting mayor but was not able to be elected mayor in the election following.
Murphy ruled-out running for mayor, and instead sought re-election to the council
In re-election his campaign, he billed himself as, "a steady hand moving forward."
The editorial board of The Boston Globe did not endorse him in 2013, instead endorsing incumbent councilor Ayanna Pressley, former councilor Michael Flaherty, and first-time candidates Michelle Wu and Jack Kelly. While praising his knowledge of the city budget, the editorial board described him as appearing "more annoyed than invigorated as of late by the challenges of the office," and having "also shown a tendency towards politically expedient decisions."
In 2014, Murphy pushed for Boston to revive its mounted police unit.
In 2015, Murphy co-sponsored BYOB ordinance with Councilor Wu, which allowed allowed patrons of certain restaurants without liquor licenses to bring their own outside bottles of alcoholic beverage to drink with their meal. He and Wu cited the success of a similar ordinance in Philadelphia in their advocacy for this policy, arguing that it would advantage neighborhood restaurants in Boston unable to secure one of the city's scarce liquor licenses.
Defeat in 2015 council election
Murphy lost his seat in the November 2015 election. As the fifth place finisher in the at-large election, he would have had the first right of refusal to rejoin the council if any at-large seat vacancies had occurred during the 2016–17 council term. This circumstance did not arise, however,
Suffolk County Register of Deeds (2016–present)
Elections
In 2016, Murphy won a four-way primary for the Democratic nomination for Suffolk County register of deeds.
In November 2016, Murphy won the general election by a broad margin over three independent challengers, and took office later that same month.
Murphy has twice won re-election to further terms as register, first in 2018 and later in 2024. His 2018 re-election saw him fend off another challenge by Katherine Forde in the Democratic primary, with Murphy receiving 52.7% of votes and Forde receiving 47.3% of votes. Similar to 2016, he once again had no Republican challenger in the general election. He won the general election with a result similar to his first election, receiving 70.7% of votes, with a vast lead over the 12.5% of votes received by his sole ballot-listed challenger (an independent candidate). The remaining 16.8% of votes being tallied for a scattering of various write-ins. In his 2024 re-election, Murphy was unchallenged in both the Democratic primary and the general election, winning more than 98% of votes tallied in each (with the remainder of votes being for a scattering of write-ins).
Tenure
Murphy created a Traveling Tuesdays program which sees members of the registry staff spend their Tuesdays at community availabilities in miscellaneous Suffolk County locations with aims of increasing local awareness of the office and its functions.
Electoral history
A sign for Murphy's 2009 re-election campaign sits among other 2009 city election campaign signs
† Richard P. Iannella was elected Register of Probate of Suffolk County in November 1996, and subsequently resigned his council seat; Stephen J. Murphy, who had finished fifth in the general election for four seats, joined the council in February 1997 and served the remainder of Iannella's term.
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