Profile of a Chief Negotiator with Unions in His DNA

Dan Livingston could be a literary invention. The son of progressive activists, he was the boy who talked to Martin Luther King Jr. about social justice, marched on Washington as a 7-year-old and grew up with a passion for movement politics that peers might have felt for baseball cards.

Now, for the second time in eight years, Livingston is the chief negotiator for state employees, facing a governor desperate to balance a budget by wringing concessions out of labor. The last time, the talks ended badly for all parties -- layoffs of 3,000 workers and an erosion of support for the governor, John G. Rowland.

This time, Livingston is facing the administration of an ostensible ally, Dannel P. Malloy, the first Democratic governor in 20 years. Malloy is demanding $1 billion from labor, saying the alternative is "unimaginable consequences" for labor and all of Connecticut.

Labor leaders compliment Malloy for much of his budget, including his willingness to take a step embraced by few other governors -- proposing a $1.5 billion tax increase, rather than gut state aid to municipalities. But their praise is tempered by disappointment over who would pay those new taxes.

At town hall meetings, like the one Monday night in Norwalk, union members regularly confront Malloy over taxes, complaining they would fall too heavily on the middle class, letting off the richest of the rich relatively lightly.

"With your proposal, you're ultimately destroying my way of life and my friends," said Jessica Carroll, a Department of Social Services employee, who complained of facing concessions and a tax hike. "How can you call it a shared sacrifice?"

It is a question Livingston calls relevant to the broader budget debate, even though it cannot come up in concession talks.

"We don't bargain about taxes," Livingston said.

But it hangs over everything. To Livingston, tax equity is part of a 30-year conversation about the concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer Americans.

"There's been a war on middle-class and working families, and an economy that works very well for a very small percentage of the people, and not very well at all for the vast majority. And we'd like to see that change," Livingston said. Then he broke into a grin and added, "We haven't really kept that secret."

Little about the passions and politics of Daniel E. Livingston are secret.

At 55, he still is the son of David and Beatrice Livingston, the couple who used to entertain King at their home in Manhasset, Long Island. The walls of his cramped office on Prospect Avenue on the Hartford-West Hartford line are a testament to his political DNA.

His father, David Livingston, who died at age 80 in 1995, was Columbia University student who organized rallies against Hitler on campus before the outbreak of World War II, then became a labor leader. He was president of District 65 of the United Auto Workers, a local that represented everyone from textile workers to writers for the Village Voice. Livingston's mother was a psychiatric social worker.

The son, who is a divorced father of two sons, works in an office dominated by black-and-white photographs of demonstrations and rallies, most featuring his father, a man with horn-rimmed glasses and dark, wavy hair. In one picture, his father is addressing thousands at an outdoor rally opposing Richard Nixon and the war in Vietnam.

It was a memorable day. It was the first time Livingston heard his father curse.

His father denounced Nixon. The crowd responded with a profane, two-word chant. The second word was "Nixon," the first an epithet never heard in the Livingston house, at least not during the waking hours of the Livingston children.

His father glanced at the son, then at the crowd, back to the son. The crowd's chant was insistent. David Livingston finally gave in to the moment, thrusting his fist in the air and yelling, "F--- Nixon!"

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