Outside the Tea Party debate, liberals make themselves heard

"It's about jobs. It's about us not having jobs," said Ella Coffee, secretary for the Hillsborough County Democratic Executive Committee. "We want to let the candidates know that it's not about these wedge issues that Republicans use as a distraction, like gay marriage, or why they personally don't like each other. Wedge issues are not going to pay our bills, or send our kids to college."

Tim Heberlein, program director for the non-partisan Florida Consumer Action Network, said, "It's the extremism that we're concerned about. The Tea Party almost put our country in default during the debt ceiling debate, just to oppose (President Obama). We want to let them know that that just isn't the right way to do politics."

Savanah Goodland from the USF chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, said, "We're just trying to let people know about the tuition hikes being put on us."

Danielle Sanon, a corrections officer, said her "biggest fear is really whether or not we'll have quality education for our children in the future."

And Alan Peacock, president of the Hillsborough branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers said, "They're trying to privatize the postal service, so we're trying to preserve the quality jobs we have as letter carriers."

The diverse crowd did seem to rally around one specific point. When Mike Fox from the Progressive Democrats of America announced over a megaphone that he wasn't going to be contained by a "free speech zone" (referring to the gated-off area near the parking lot that the debate's organizers had set aside for demonstrators), the crowd agreed. The group marched out of the sectioned-off area and reassembled behind a barrier in the shadow of the Tea Party Express tour bus.