Former State Rep Tom Murphy (D) Has Died

[Ghost in the Machine]

Obituaries in the News
Published: 12/18/07, 6:45 AM EDT
By The Associated Press
(AP) - Tom Murphy

ATLANTA (AP) - Former state Rep. Tom Murphy, who was the longest-serving state House speaker in the nation when he was voted out of office in 2002, died Monday. He was 83.

Murphy died just after 10 p.m., said former Rep. Terry Coleman, who succeeded Murphy, a fellow Democrat, as speaker. He suffered a stroke in 2004, and friends said his health had declined since.

"An era in Georgia politics is over," Coleman said.

The 2002 election that removed him from office marked the beginning of the state's "Republican revolution," and two years later Murphy's chamber was in Republican hands.

Murphy, of Bremen, west of Atlanta, was elected to the House in 1960 and to the speaker's post in 1973. For more than two decades, he was undisputed ruler of the state House, and he never shied away from a fight.

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