The rhetoric soared as state senators from both parties lionized retiring Senate President Martin Looney during a three-hour ceremony at the Capitol on Wednesday.
“If there was a Mount Rushmore of Connecticut legislators,” said state Sen. Derek Slap (D-West Hartford), “I don’t know who all four people would be, but I think we all know that one of them would be Marty Looney.”
“I look at you as the Ted Williams of this legislature,” said state Sen. John Kissel (D-Enfield). “You’re in that stratosphere.”
Multiple speakers testified that no one in the Capitol has uttered a negative word about Looney—an astonishing accomplishment in the world of politics.
“I’ve been in these two chambers (House and Senate) for 22 years,” said state Sen. Doug McCrory (D-Hartford), “and I have never heard anyone say anything bad about Marty. That’s character, brother, and I appreciate you and I respect you.”
“I admire you because you’re a good person,” said Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding (R-Brookfield), who acknowledged that he rarely agrees with Looney politically. “You’re a good father, a good husband, a good grandfather. You are all the things that I hope I can be in my life.”
“You have taught me by example,” said state Sen. Tony Hwang (R-Fairfield), who is also retiring, “by your interactions with my Senate leadership… You have always demonstrated that your word is your bond and that you respect the institution of the Senate.”
Looney, 77, is stepping down after 46 years in the state legislature.
He told the chamber that he became interested in politics by chance, when Rosa DeLauro, now the veteran Democratic congresswoman, canvassed his New Haven neighborhood in the 1970’s.
“Maybe I would have found my way into government and politics some other way, but who knows?” said Looney. “I think the lesson for all of us is to recognize and be ready for an opportunity when it comes, and to have the good sense to walk through that door when it opens.”
Looney and DeLauro soon worked together in New Haven politics, and have supported each other since.
“What makes Marty extraordinary,” said DeLauro, “was not (the bills that) he passed, but how he governed: with patience, with principle and an unshakeable belief that government, done right, can lift people up.”
Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz called Looney a role model, and former chief of staff for state Senate Democrats, Vin Mauro, agreed.
“You respected people far more than they deserved to be respected in a lot of ways,” Mauro told Looney. “You taught people how to be professional.”
Looney first entered the Capitol as a state representative in 1981, and says back then, he had no idea that he would remain there for more than half of his life.
