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The candy desk has been a tradition of the United States Senate since 1965, whereby a Republican senator who sits at a particular desk near a busy entrance keeps a drawer full of candy for members of the body. The current occupant of the candy desk is Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin since 2025.
In 1965, California's George Murphy joined the Senate, and kept candy in his desk for himself and his colleagues, despite eating being prohibited on the Senate floor. When he left the Senate after a six-year term, other Republican senators maintained the custom. The tradition did not become publicly known until the mid-1980s, when Washington Senator Slade Gorton revealed it in announcing that he would be sitting at the candy desk.
Aside from Murphy, a total of 18 senators have maintained the candy desk tradition, including John McCain, Harrison Schmitt, and Rick Santorum, who stocked it with confectionery from his home state of Pennsylvania, including from the Hershey Chocolate Company. After Santorum left the Senate in 2007, the candy desk was maintained by a number of senators for a short time each, before Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey kept the desk from 2015 to 2023.
Paul Fannin, Harrison Schmitt, Roger Jepsen, and Steve Symms all respectively continued the new candy desk tradition after Murphy's term was over. Fannin, Schmitt, and Jepsen supplied only hard candy, but Symms was the first to stock sweets supplied by "candy and chocolate associations." During the tenures of these senators, the candy desk was not fixed to one particular spot. Senate seating charts show Schmitt, during his time with the candy desk, sat one seat to the right of its traditional spot for the 95th Congress, and then across the aisle from the traditional spot for the 96th.
The existence of the tradition was not publicly known until 1985, when Slade Gorton put out a press release stating "He was now the occupant of this desk and would carry on the rich traditions started by Murphy." He also named the past senators who had continued the tradition.
In 1997, the candy desk was referenced by Kit Bond during a debate over the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 1998. He compared the sizes of microchips to candy he had taken from the desk.
Rick Santorum sat at the candy desk from 1997 to 2007. Being a senator from Pennsylvania, he filled the candy desk with Hershey candy and Just Born products (such as Mike and Ike and Hot Tamales). During this period, Hershey shipped roughly 100 pounds of chocolate and other candy four times a year for Santorum to fill the desk with. When Santorum failed to get re-elected in the 2006 U.S. Senate elections, Hershey stopped supplying the desk. "We were pleased to be a small part of sweetening up congressional proceedings" said Kirk Saville, a spokesman for Hershey. The desk returned to Pennsylvania control in 2015 under Sen. Pat Toomey, who also stocked it with Hershey products, as well as Pennsylvania-made Mars brands.
After Santorum's electoral defeat, Senator Craig Thomas began sitting at the desk. Wyoming, the state he was representing, has no members of the National Confectioners Association, and therefore no candymakers large enough to donate hundreds of dollars of candy to fill the desk. Senate ethics rules "forbid members accepting gifts worth $100 or more a year from a single source," which can become a problem if a large amount of candy is consumed from the desk each year. An exception to this rule allows larger gifts of objects created or produced in the state the senator is from, as long as the items are primarily not used by the senator and his staff. This is so senators can "offer visitors home-grown snacks, such as Florida orange juice or Georgia peanuts."
When asked about Thomas being in charge of the candy desk, Susan Smith, a representative from the National Confectioners Association, stated, "We're happy to provide candy if there are association members...It would be difficult for us to do now." These issues were worked around by asking many small, local, Wyoming confectionery businesses and to give small amounts of candy that were rotated in and out of the desk.
After Thomas's death in 2007, it was looked after by George Voinovich and then Mel Martinez. Both had relatively short tenures. In 2009, George LeMieux, Martinez's successor, began sitting at the desk and was there until he left the Senate in 2011. Mark Kirk of Illinois occupied the desk from 2011 to 2015.
The desk received renewed attention in 2020, during the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump, when a candy bar originating from the desk was spotted being eaten by Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy during proceedings.
Upon Toomey's retirement in 2023, Indiana Senator Todd Young took over the candy desk. He has put some well-known Indiana-made candies such as Kraft Foods caramels and Albanese Candy gummies in it, as well as some lesser-known, mostly local brands. The candy is all donated by the companies, Young said.
The desk is the first desk on the right, or Republican, side, and is in the last row of desks. Traditionally, the candy desk is always on the Republican side of the Senate Chamber and is used by a Republican senator. Since 2025, the desk has been occupied by Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin.
Other senators sometimes keep candy in their desks as well. Katherine Buck, a United States Senate Page at the time, wrote in 2005:
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