Martin Looney, the ‘bionic man,’ outlasting other leaders in power
As the 2016 election approached, with all eyes on the presidential race, Sen. Martin Looney campaigned far less than usual.
It’s not that the New Haven Democrat, president pro-tempore in the state Senate, took his battle lightly. No, he faced a more serious challenge in the form of kidney disease so serious he needed a transplant. He had put out pleas for a donor in his far-flung network.
Looney also needed a hip replacement. But that would have to wait until he received a new kidney. “I did what I could, but it was exhausting,” he says now, looking back on that campaign.
Looney had served in the House or Senate for 36 years. He was 68, a decade older than the next oldest of the four caucus chiefs at the state Capitol, Sen. Len Fasano, R-North Haven, the Senate minority leader.
Considering that, it might have seemed far-fetched to suggest Looney, now 72, would be the last one still standing of those caucus leaders, four years later. And yet, assuming Looney wins his re-election bid on Nov. 3 — which is all but certain — he will arrive at his swearing-in in January as the most powerful politician in Connecticut not named Lamont.
He will be the only one left of the four current leaders: Fasano, who’s retiring from the Senate after 18 years; House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, who’s following a non-strict tradition of exiting after four years with the gavel; and Rep. Themis Klarides, RDerby, the House GOP leader, who’s leaving for what most of us believe is a run for the governor’s seat in 2022 — speculation she makes no effort to quell.
And Looney has no intention of slowing. He and Rep. Mary Mushinsky, DWallingford, who both joined the state House in 1981, have now tied the state longevity record of George “Doc” Gunther, a Stratford Republican who served in the Senate for 40 years, from 1966 to 2006.
I just said this scenario might have seemed farfetched back in 2016, but remarkably, no one who knows Looney — in the Capitol or out on the hustings — believed he would bow out based on his maladies, age, longevity or the burnout that seems to grip just about everyone in politics sooner or later.
“That never entered my mind,” Klarides said at the end of a recent special legislative session that, most likely, marked the conclusion of the weird General Assembly year of 2020 — the last for her, Aresimowicz and Fasano as leaders.
“He’s like the bionic man,” Klarides added. “Marty loves it. He lives and breathes it.”
Looney, who joined the Senate in 2012, is also the bionic memory machine. Aside from his famous ability to recite every Heisman Trophy winner in order, he will recount the details of just about any election from his 40 years. That’s any election, not just his own. I mentioned a few months ago that I was writing about former Sen. Mark Nielsen, a Danbury Republican in the ’90s, and Looney named all of Nielsen’s opponents going years back, in order, just as a casual part of conversation.
Klarides quickly added that her respect for Looney comes whether or not they agree on a given policy — and for her and most Republicans, that has been “not” more often than they’d like to have seen.
The minimum wage increase, arguably the most aggressive in the United States, would not have happened without Looney making it a priority, and ditto the paid family and medical leave reform that will mean one-half of 1 percent of wages coming out of our paychecks starting Jan. 1.
Looney in 2019 called for a mostly voluntary consolidation of small school districts, an idea that didn’t fly even in his own caucus. And looking ahead, he lists criminal justice reform including revamping the bail system; tax reform to make the state more reliant on levies on the rich and less on property taxes; health care reform; and a change in the way the state shares money with towns — all of it in as much detail, with as much history, as necessary.
By some accounts, Looney was responsible for Gov. Ned Lamont not getting tolls in 2019, which would have been a signature first-year victory for the governor. Looney still insists he didn’t have the votes in the Senate at the moments that mattered as the plans shifted. Others disagree and say he protected his caucus from casting an unpopular vote that would have hurt Democrats on Nov. 3, 2020.
Either way, Looney is clearly driven by the sort of nose-to-the grindstone policy details that leaven the harsh blows of politics — though he said he enjoys both. And he himself joins the camp of no-surprise that he made it through 2016 to the last-man-standing moment we will see in 2021.
“I had confidence that I was going to find a way to manage, whether it was on dialysis or with the transplant,” he said. “I care about serving and I’m just grateful for the opportunity to continue.”
He was days or a few short weeks from having to start dialysis when, at a funeral for a young mutual friend, his close friend Judge Brian Fischer told him after that election that he had matched and was ready to offer a kidney. The surgery was that Dec. 17, and he made plans for the upcoming session from his hospital bed.
After years as majority leader, he was in his first term as Senate president pro-tem. “There was a lot that I intended to get done and I didn’t really think of leaving.”
He’s still not thinking of leaving, though breaking Gunther’s 40-year Senate record in 2032, might be too steep.
“He waited long enough to get in this position of leader, and once you get to be leader, your fuse is lit as to when to leave,” Fasano said after the recent session. “Whether it’s six or eight years, it’s certainly not expansive of 10 years. … It’s like a quarterback in the pocket.”
Fasano’s years as minority leader — broken up by a successful two-year stint sharing power with Fasano from 2017 to 2019 — may have been harder than Looney’s tenure atop the majority. The loyal opposition must fight every battle and lose many.
“It’s exhausting and I love it, but you know in your heart and your soul when it’s time to leave,” Fasano said.
That time hasn’t come yet for Looney, who, in normal campaigning years such as 2018, is known for carrying the flag for other Democrats. He helped lead the phone banks and the street troops in 2018 in Danbury, when former union boss Julie Kushner, now Sen. Julie Kushner, challenged an incumbent.
“I was impressed and I was moved by it,” said Andrea Gartner, Democratic chair of Danbury.
“That was a high priority race for us at the time,” Looney said recently.
He’s just as matter-of-fact about helping first-term Sen. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, through personal threats in the mandatory vaccine issue that dominated early 2020 before coronavirus. “I reached out to him and he provided me with all the support to make me feel comfortable,” Anwar recalls. “It’s almost like you are going to college and you are working with a professor who is also your friend.”
Looney faces challenges this year from the left, a petitioning candidate, Alex Taubes; and from the right, Republican Jameson White. Neither lists elected office in his campaign bio.
I ask Looney about goals for 2021 and he hedges. “There’s still the election ahead and looking to hold onto our majority and to expand it,” he said.