BRISTOL - Since Connecticut politics this year has become particularly nasty, politicians welcomed a brief respite Tuesday with the restart of a light-hearted political roast.
The event was the 129th meeting of the Crocodile Club - a long-running luncheon that has traditionally attracted the top politicians in the state.
The club has been dormant since 2003 due to the illness and death of longtime organizer, J. Harwood "Stretch'' Norton, but organizers resumed the event Tuesday with the permission of Norton's family.
State Republican chairman Christopher Healy, who was sitting on the dais, said in an interview that it was a fine idea to restart the Yankee tradition.
"We need more of these collective events in which we can have a few jokes at our own expense,'' Healy said. "Politics should be more fun than it is. It's a small state, after all.''
The emcee this year was radio personality Ray Dunaway, who first attended the luncheon back in the early 1990s.
"People just like tradition in this state,'' Dunaway told Capitol Watch. "It's been eight years. Stretch really was the event. It was all about Stretch.''
The luncheon drew about 400 people to the ballroom at the Lake Compounce amusement park in Bristol, and they dined on the trademark menu - right down to the watermelon.
Stretch Norton was the great-grandson of the original founder, Gad Norton, who started the club in 1875 in an effort to thank lawmakers who had passed legislation to change the boundary line between Southington and Bristol. That maneuver placed Norton's property in Bristol and allowed him to vote there, which prompted a long-running dispute between the towns and caused some Southington officials to boycott the Crocodile luncheon even 100 years later. The proceeds go to the nonprofit New England Carousel Museum on Riverside Avenue in Bristol.