Mary Mushinsky was a 29-year-old political organizer and public-interest lobbyist when she decided to take a more direct role in setting public policy in Connecticut by running for a seat in the General Assembly.

That was 1980.

A Democrat, she ran on the same ballot line as Jimmy Carter. He lost, and she won — 23 times, not counting primaries, a liberal prevailing every two years in the purplish 85th House District of Wallingford.

No more. Mushinsky, 74, the “dean” of the House as its longest-serving member, announced from the House floor on Thursday that her 46th year in the General Assembly will be her last.

Her potential successor, whom she declined to identify, will announce their candidacy Friday. 

“I have the greatest respect and love for this institution, members here and the staff,” Mushinsky said. “And I’ve learned something from everyone here, including my Republican friends on the other side. I even learned something from the senators.”

Lawmakers laughed at that. Nothing unifies the House like a jab at the Senate. 

Mushinsky hastened to add she had a favorite or two in the Senate, most notably Martin M. Looney. She and Looney are the last from the House class of 1980 in the General Assembly. Looney was elected to the Senate in 1992.

Their class included a future governor, John G. Rowland, and a future Senate president pro tem — Looney, who holds the record for the longest-serving leader of the Connecticut Senate.

Mushinsky’s career spans an era of cultural, political and institutional change at the state Capitol. Smoking was permitted when she arrived, and the Capitol’s press room was overcrowded with more than two dozen reporters who worked there year round.

One of them was Martin J. Waters, an Associated Press reporter who gave up his Capitol assignment after he started dating Mushinsky. They married in 1985.

Their two sons were born in 1987 and 1989. She breast fed both at the Capitol, discomfiting male colleagues.

“I didn’t care,” she said. “My bosses are in Wallingford. They didn’t care.” 

Before running, Mushinsky was an organizer and lobbyist for the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, one of the public-interest lobbies inspired by Ralph Nader. Her boss, Miles S. Rapoport, tried to dissuade her from running.

In an interview in 2010, when Mushinsky became the longest-tenured member of the House, Rapoport recalled that CCAG staff were meant to help others find their voices.

“The job of an organizer is to go out and get ordinary people to speak on their own behalf,” Rapoport said. He told her, “Organizers are not supposed to get their name in the paper or have a persona of their own. And the legislature is kind of a compromising environment. You shouldn’t do it.”

He added, “Fortunately for Connecticut, she ignored my advice.”

Rapoport said he and other organizers reconsidered their role in elective politics in response to Ronald Reagan’s election, which energized the right and brought young conservatives into politics. 

Rapoport would follow Mushinsky into elective politics, winning a seat in the House and then becoming secretary of the state.

Other members of the class of 1980 were two future speakers: Thomas D. Ritter and his successor, Moira Lyons, the only woman to hold the post.

Ritter’s son, Matt, the current speaker, was not born.