Last night I went to the CT News Junkie Party at Rajun Cajun in Hartford. I was a good party and as Dan Levine commented on CT News Junkie last night after the party, “It was fabulous to see so many people do more than just gripe about the state of journalism, but take action by eating some damn good food!”

If you want good journalism about what is going on in the State, be sure to check out www.ctnewsjunkie.com. If you want to eat good fried turkey, spicy chicken, crawfish and have some inexpensive beers in the Hartford area, be sure to check out Rajun Cajun.

So, who was there and what happened? Well, there were a lot of people there. Many that I knew, many that I probably should have know, and many that I know online, but haven’t met. As an example of the later category, Ken Krayeske of The 40 Year Plan was there, at least based on his comment on CT News Junkie. However, I don’t know what Ken looks like and didn’t meet him.

Since my wife ran for State Representative in the last cycle and because of my involvement with various political groups, I knew a lot of the State Representatives there. I had good talks with Denise Merrill (D-54), Andy Fleischmann (D-18), David McCluskey (D-20), Melissa Olsen (D-46), Chris Donovan (D-84) and Peter Tercyak (D-26). Other notables where there that I didn’t get a chance to speak with, such as Lt. Gov. Kevin Sullivan. There were other State Reps there that I didn’t really know or get a chance to speak with, and less you think it was only a Democratic event, I was introduced to a couple Republicans, but I didn’t know who they were.

Some of the other interesting folks there included Beverly Brakeman, who is Director of CT NOW, and Sam Goldberger, a retired history professor who are both from West Hartford. From further away I met Eddie from /a>Almost Connecticut. Eddie is a very interesting person and we had a great talk. He has a post up about the event on his blog and I’m glad he could make it.

Another very interesting person I met was Skye Sutherland. Skye is a painter from Portland. She wasn’t part of the typical political circles and she wasn’t sure what a blog was. We had a good talk and we’ll see if she sets up a blog sometime soon.

And of course, the political operatives were there in force. There was a good showing by people from John DeStefano’s team. Susan Voigt, Town Chair of New Haven was there, as was Shonu, Chrissy, and Jen from the Mayor’s campaign and Paul Nunez from the Mayor’s office. Tom Swan, on leave from CCAG to run the Lamont for Senate campaign was also there.

There were members of the press there, in particular, WTIC-61 and the New Haven Register.

The discussions ran the gamut from Rell’s State of the State speech, to pay-to-play legislation and Lamont’s Senatorial campaign.

It was a fun event and it was great to see people interested in quality Connecticut news.