When the Connecticut Legislature gavels in on Wednesday, it will mark 46 years of legislative service for New Haven Senator Martin Looney (D).
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas to discuss his article, “How Marty Looney shapes CT politics: Patience and persistence,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Mark’s story here.
WSHU: Hello, Paz, your article gives us some fascinating insight into what makes Senate President Pro Tempore Marty Looney tick, considering he's probably the longest-serving lawmaker in Hartford right now and also one of the most liberal. So what is it that drives Marty Looney?
MP: So spending time looking at, really, what motivates Senator Looney has been, you know, I think, a very interesting undertaking for me, and hopefully the story that was produced, people will find as interesting. Everybody knows certain things about Marty Looney, as you said, he is very liberal. He pushes the envelope all the time on a more progressive tax system on all kinds of protections for workers and the ability of unions to organize. He was a force, not the only one, but behind the minimum wage law that got Connecticut from $10.10 an hour to $15 in a few short years, and then he has now forever indexed it to basically a consumer price or employee employment cost index.
WSHU: Which takes it out of the legislature. So it's now automatic.
MP: Yes, exactly. Barring legislation that will take it out. It has really taken the politics out of changing the minimum wage from year to year.
WSHU: Now, one of the things he's been pushing over the years has been a millionaire's tax. How does that square with his relationship with the governor right now? How do they work that out? Because I know that the governor is against any more taxes.
MP: I don't think they do work it out. Here's the other thing: he plays the long game. You know, it's not an exaggeration to say he has been working to change the income tax since the moment he voted for it 35 years ago as a flat four and a half percent tax on all income, and in those intervening 35 years, he has had significant success. The top rate is now 6.99%. The governor, a couple of years ago, with the support of Senator Looney and other lawmakers of both parties, managed a tax cut that really lowered the rate for the lower two tiers of that rate, so low-income and middle-income people pay a far lower rate. So he has succeeded in making it more progressive. But you know, Marty Looney is never quite done with this. There's always a next step in his view. It both promotes exasperation and admiration.
WSHU: I have seen the governor roll his eyes sometimes when Looney says we have not done enough, right?
MP: And again, Looney borders on being an ideologue at times, but he is also highly pragmatic. And what I mean by that, you know, take the Earned Income Tax Credit. He started pushing for a state earned income tax credit when John Rowland was governor, and he didn't get very far with John Rowland or Jodi Rell, his Republican successor. But, you know, in the first year of the Malloy administration, they put an earned income tax credit on the books. It was fairly modest. The state was under great fiscal distress. Then, as things improved, Marty Looney would come back to it, and in partnership with Governor Lamont, whom he disagreed with many times on these things, they succeeded in raising the value of that earned income tax credit. It's now 40% of the federal credit, you know. So that's an area in which he has been successful by just staying with it, staying with it, staying with it.
The governor, I do not see the governor bending on the question of doing what Marty would like to do, which is adding an additional 1% tax on capital gains to be paid by the highest earners. You know, as you said, a millionaire's tax that has come out of the finance committee before, but it, you know, it's not going to get very far with Ned Lamont as governor. So that's the kind of push and pull, you see, and we'll continue to see. The other thing that's interesting about Looney is some of these pro-labor things. There's a huge body of stuff, and he is never really taken credit or authorship, really, for any single thing. But as Senator Julie Kushner, the Labor Committee co-chair, says, Looney was in the middle of it, on all of it, you know, and I'm talking about things like paid family and medical leave, about Connecticut's paid sick days law, which was originally passed under Governor Malloy, it was very weak, very limited. It was just really to get the idea on the books. But under Governor Lamont, and again, in partnership with Senator Looney and others, that has become a universal mandate, really, on all private employers to pay a certain degree of paid time off. And that was really a significant thing. Another thing is the so-called captive audience meetings.
Now, as we explore in the story, Senator Looney was very much influenced by his father, who was a union organizer at the Winchester firearms factory in New Haven, and they had some, some pretty heated fights over organizing. And, you know, he suffered personally. I mean, he was given a different job, which was more physically difficult for him, but the captive audience bill banned employers from requiring that their workers sit for certain meetings, and mainly when there would be an organizing effort. You know, they could require employees, in the old days, to sit and listen to this is what's going to happen if you guys vote to organize.
WSHU: It's also interesting that you say his parents played a big role in giving him those liberal credentials, both his mother and father.
MP: His mother and father were from County Clare, Ireland, and they emigrated to the United States. They actually met in the United States, not back in Ireland, but the father arrived in 1927, the mother in 1929, just in time to experience depression firsthand, but everything that followed. She was active when she lived in New York and was a hotel worker. She was active in her union, you know, Looney’s father clearly was very active in his, so, you know, once they could become citizens and could vote. They were big backers of FDR, of the New Deal, the Democrat, the Democratic Party in general, and they were both pretty devout Catholics, although the mother who passed away some years ago at the age of 81 she was a secondary but important character in my profile of Senator Looney, because she was somebody who was a boat rocker, she was somebody who was a devout Catholic, but yet an anti cleric. She was so offended that, when she was still in Ireland, the local parish pastor spoke against the IRA. And you got to remember, you know, this was just a few years after, you know, the rebellion. And in fact, one of her cousins was shot to death by the Brits, and she was so offended by his comments against the IRA, and it really carried through the rest of her life. And Senator Looney has some funny stories about how that would show itself.
WSHU: I think a fascinating story there is that his mother absolutely refused to vote for an Irish candidate for governor, Meskill.
MP: That’s a story that could be in a movie. She's at a wake, right? What's more Irish than that? She is at a wake for a family uncle, and she's approached by another fellow Irish woman, a ward leader in New Haven. Because Looney, his mother's maiden name, was Mescall. It was spelled differently than Tom Meskill, who was elected governor in 1970 and went on to a great career as a judge. But so she was approached, because, again, you got to remember, in those days there was still this tribal politics, you know, Italians versus Irish, New Haven was this great battleground on that kind of stuff. And, you know, this woman had a group called Democrats for Meskill, and she said, look, he could be your cousin. And she said, I wouldn't give it to him if he were my brother. He's not a Democrat.
WSHU: Well, Paz, thank you so much. I really appreciate you doing this, and it's, like I said, a very fascinating insight into one of the longest serving lawmakers in Hartford right now, Senate President Marty Looney.
