Gregory Francis Murphy

Current office and 2026 campaign

Gregory Francis Murphy, a Republican, has represented North Carolina's 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2019 and is serving his fourth term ¹². He was elected on November 5, 2024 and sworn in for the 119th Congress on January 3, 2025 ³. In the 2024 general election he received 248,276 votes to Libertarian Gheorghe Cormos's 72,565; no Democrat filed for the seat that year ⁴.

Murphy filed for re-election on December 5, 2025 and appears on the November 3, 2026 general-election ballot ⁵. He was the only Republican to file in the district, and no Republican primary was conducted there on March 3, 2026 ⁵⁶. His opponents are Democrat Raymond Smith Jr., who won a contested March 3, 2026 Democratic primary with 23,552 votes to Allison Jaslow's 18,020, and Libertarian Daniel Cavender ⁵⁶.

Through June 30, 2026, Murphy's federal campaign account reported $2,357,956 in receipts for the 2026 cycle: $1,013,138 from individual contributions and $1,036,299 from other political committees, with $2,697,820 in cash on hand ⁷.

Background and education

Murphy was born in 1963 ². He grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and graduated magna cum laude from Davidson College in 1985 ⁸¹. He then attended the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, graduating with honors and as a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha honor society, and completed a surgical residency in urology and renal transplantation at the University of Kentucky in Lexington ⁸.

Career

After his residency Murphy settled in Greenville, North Carolina, where he still lives, to begin his practice ⁸³. He was formerly president of Eastern Urological Associates in Greenville and Affiliate Professor of Surgery and Chief of the Division of Urology at the East Carolina University School of Medicine ⁸. He served three years as chief of staff of Vidant Medical Center, which his office describes as a Level 1 trauma center serving 29 counties in eastern North Carolina, and is a member of the North Carolina Institute of Medicine ⁸. His congressional biography describes him as the only actively practicing physician in Congress, "seeing patients a few days a month still" ⁸, and his office elsewhere calls him "the only practicing surgeon in Congress today" ¹.

His congressional biography states that he "has traveled extensively for the last 35 years to Third World Countries including India, several parts of Africa, Nicaragua and Haiti as a Medical Missionary" ⁸. It also records that he served as Davidson College's alumni president and sat on its board of trustees ⁸.

Murphy received the Distinguished Medical Alumni Award from the UNC School of Medicine ⁸. The American Association of Clinical Urologists lists him as its 2017 Distinguished Leadership Award recipient, an award the organization says "recognizes elected officials and executive-level appointees who support the organization's priorities and the interests of the urologic community before state government" ⁹.

Office history

Murphy served in the North Carolina House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019 ⁸. He was elected to state House District 9 in 2016, receiving 22,869 votes to Democrat Brian Farkas's 17,007 ¹⁰, and re-elected in 2018 with 17,234 votes to Democrat Kris Rixon's 11,510 ¹¹.

He ran in the 2019 special election for North Carolina's 3rd Congressional District to succeed the late Congressman Walter B. Jones Jr. ⁸, winning the September 10, 2019 special general election with 70,407 votes to Democrat Allen Thomas's 42,738 ¹². His office announced that he was sworn in by the Speaker of the House on September 17, 2019 ¹³; his office's biography page gives the date as September 15, 2019 ⁸. He was returned to the 117th, 118th and 119th Congresses ².

Legislative record and accomplishments

In the North Carolina General Assembly, Murphy served as Senior Chair of Health Policy and Chair of Health and Human Services Appropriations during his second term ⁸. General Assembly records list him first among the primary sponsors of House Bill 243, the Strengthen Opioid Misuse Prevention (STOP) Act, ratified as Session Law 2017-74 on June 29, 2017 ¹⁴. His congressional biography states he was "the primary author of both the STOP Act and the HOPE Act" ⁸; the Heroin and Opioid Prevention and Enforcement (HOPE) Act of 2018 was enacted as Session Law 2018-44 from Senate Bill 616, whose sole listed primary sponsor is Senator J. Davis ¹⁵.

In Congress, Murphy sits on the Committee on Ways and Means, the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, the Committee on House Administration and the Joint Committee on Printing ³. He serves on the Ways and Means Health and Trade subcommittees and the Veterans' Affairs Health Subcommittee, and co-chairs the House Republican Doctors Caucus and the Academic Medicine Caucus ¹⁶⁸.

He has sponsored 125 measures across the 116th through 119th Congresses, two of which have been enacted ¹⁷. H.R. 1491, the Disaster Related Extension of Deadlines Act, became Public Law 119-64; it requires the Internal Revenue Service to treat a disaster-related postponement of the federal return deadline as an extension of that deadline when calculating the limit on a tax refund ¹⁷¹⁸. H.R. 5037 designated a U.S. Postal Service facility in Farmville, North Carolina as the "Walter B. Jones, Jr. Post Office" and became Public Law 116-203 ¹⁷.

Measures he introduced in 2026 include H.R. 8344, the Senior Citizens' Freedom to Work Act of 2026, introduced April 16, 2026 "to amend title II of the Social Security Act to repeal the retirement earnings test" ¹⁷¹⁹, and H.R. 8270, the Every Dollar Counts Act of 2026, introduced April 14, 2026, which would require "out-of-pocket expenditures for drugs to count towards an individual's deductible and out-of-pocket maximum" ¹⁷²⁰. Both remained in committee as of July 2026 ¹⁷.

With Representative Rouzer, Murphy hosts the annual Water Adaptations to Ensure Regional Success (WATERS) Summit on flooding and waterway challenges in North Carolina, which his office describes as "a nonpartisan effort ... designed to foster legislative solutions and develop strategies to tackle these issues for years to come"; the fifth annual summit is scheduled for Greenville on October 21, 2026 ²¹.

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