Friday evening, after work, I headed over to the grand opening of the Chris Donovan for Congress campaign office opening. I was running a little bit late so I couldn’t even get into the room where Chris was speaking. Hence, I’m writing more about the people that were there.

They say you can tell a lot about a person by the friends they keep, and perhaps this is a good way to look at the event. As the Connecticut Speaker of the House, Chris attracted a large number of legislators and their staff, many of whom I’ve gotten to know through various campaigns or advocacy, and it was great to reconnect with many of them after a long and difficult summer.

I also saw a bunch of old friends from the labor movement and listened to some discussions about internal union politics.

Another group that I’m more recently spending more time with is the non-profit community, especially those that care for the underserved and underprivileged communities. There were several new friends from this group there.

The bottom line was that this was a large crowd of people who work hard to help the people around them. It wasn’t the high dollar group that is conservative in showing compassion.

Besides being a group people that work hard for what they believe in, it was also a group of people that enjoy being together, and unlike so many campaign events where the crowds quickly disperse after the speeches are made and the appropriate hands shaken, this was a group that continued to hang out later into the evening. Of course it helped that there was pizza, beer and wine, but what helped most was that they were people you want to hang out with.