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The Coffee Party, a latte-sipping, liberal reaction to the populist conservative Tea Party movement, has emerged on the political scene, attracting hundreds of thousands of online followers.
The Coffee Party has attracted more than 300,000 followers on Facebook Photo: AFP/GETTY
It has just one candidate, Jeff Reed, who is competing in Missouri's 9th district, a safe rural Republican seat, in next week's midterm elections. He does not yet appear to have a website up and running.
While its slogan, "Wake Up and Stand Up", has yet to inspire the popularity that has seen Tea Party groups back 139 candidates for the House of Representatives on a surge of anti-big government sentiment, the Coffee Party's founder takes solace in attracting more than 300,000 followers on Facebook.
"I was so tired of the Tea Party and I wanted to say what I thought," said Annabel Park, 41, a documentary film-maker from the suburbs of Washington who launched the idea on the networking website early in the year.
"It's definitely a reaction of ordinary people to the Tea Party, because in all the newspapers and the media you read that the Tea Party says they are the real America. But the way they're trying to make changes is dangerous," she said.
In contrast to the fierce anti-Washington tone of the larger movement, the Coffee Party recognises that "the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will".
Miss Park furthermore wants to promote civility and inclusiveness in political debate.
At a recent party meeting in Woodbridge, Virginia, Gregg Reynolds, 65, predicted that the Coffee Party would one day become a political heavyweight, although he added: "I don't see that happening in my lifetime".
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