Senator Dean Murray was cast into the national spotlight when his name appeared in a clue on the popular TV show Jeopardy.
“My phone started ringing off the hook the moment it was aired,” recounted the senator, who was first elected as a state assemblyman. “I figured something really big had happened.”
“This movement named for a 1773 event arrived in 2010 starting with the election of newbie Dean Murray to the N.Y. State Assembly,” read the Double Jeopardy clue in the category, “Politics as Unusual.”
“The people felt like their elected officials weren't listening to them. They were just using us as a cash cow, taking our money and then doing what they wanted,” Murray said in explaining the impetus for one of the movement’s first protests in Medford. “We were made up of Democrats, Republicans, independents, you name it. We had union people, we had non-union people, business owners, you name it. The acronym stood for ‘Taxed Enough Already.’”
Murray said he wasn’t a candidate at the time but an organizer. When he did run for the assembly, the group got behind him and he won, making him the first elected official in the U.S. associated with the movement.
“We changed the face of politics for a while, and it woke some people up, and I think it's still kind of there,” Murray went on. “It still applies to today; people are starting to feel frustrated again. They're starting to feel like they're not being heard, and they're not being represented properly.”
The legislator, who lost a reelection bid for the assembly and then returned to Albany as a senator, said the core of the movement is still there. “It never died. I just think it was kind of drowned out by other things. You had the Black Lives Matter Movement. You had all the left-radical stuff. I think the attitude is still there with a lot of people who really worked hard and are still active, still involved, still pushing for the same principles the movement stood for.”
The Jeopardy contestant who drew the $400 clue got the question correct: “What is the Tea Party?”