Would you like coffee or tea at your party?

MANASSAS — From the name, you might expect the Coffee Party to be a stronger brew than its counterpart, the better-known Tea Party.

But the fledgling organization’s leaders said last week that they want the opposite. Though they want dialogue with the Tea Party, considered a conservative group (the “Tea” stands for “Taxed Enough Already”), they said they don’t like some of the Tea partiers’ tactics.

Too often they resort to signs and shouting better left to rowdy college basketball fans during March Madness, said Bob Settle of Manassas.

“Why can’t we sit down and discuss issues in a civil manner?” asked Settle on Thursday at — where else? — a Starbucks in Woodbridge.

That’s the crux of the Coffee Party movement, its leaders said: discussing issues — and looking for solutions — with civility.

The Coffee Party has its beginnings with Annabel Park and Eric Byler, the filmmakers who made the local immigration documentary “9500 Liberty.”

“We all saw Annabel’s Facebook page,” said Al Alborn, who describes himself as a fiscal conservative.

The Coffee Party Movement page on the social-networking site has nearly 180,000 fans, and 350 Coffee Party events were held throughout the country last weekend.

The Prince William area chapter held its gathering at Haymarket’s Town Hall.

But lest anyone consider the group a bunch of “squishy” liberals, Bill Golden said that he is a confirmed conservative.

In fact, with all the middle-aged, white, male faces in photos from the gathering, he said someone could mistake the group for a bunch of people at a Tea Party event.

Prince William Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart isn’t buying that, however He said that if everyone in the Coffee Party was a “middle-of-the-road veteran” such as Alborn, he might have more respect for the group.

But Stewart said Byler and Park are just “ultra-left attention-seekers” who “despise” him and Supervisor John T. Stirrup Jr., who led the county’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

“This is just an ultra-left fringe group,” the Republican said.

Those kinds of comments don’t sit well with Alborn, but he and his mates seem undeterred.

Golden said that he no longer sides with the Republican Party, but he also mentioned that he “would never vote for [President Barack Obama.”

“Now, I did,” Alborn replied.

Elena Schlossberg-Kunkel, another Coffee Party leader here, said that labeling the grassroots group as a Democratic-leaning operation is “simply divisive.”

“There’s a lot of different people with different views here,” said Schlossberg-Kunkel, best known for writing on the antibvbl.net and moonhowlings.net blogs.

She went a step further, saying she wishes people in government didn’t have to divide themselves into Republicans and Democrats. “We don’t do that anywhere else, in any other business,” she said.

So what does the Coffee Party hope to accomplish?

Alborn said that if the group can organize properly, it can add to public policy debates, be a “game-changer.”

It perhaps could endorse candidates, but it’s not likely to evolve into a third major political party, he said. Or, as Golden put it, “What we have to focus on is process.”

Local Coffee partiers are targeting these main issues: health care reform, financial reform, voter education and transparency and the process of governing. But the ultimate direction of the movement is still forming.

“The success of the Coffee Party will be about who shows up,” Alborn said.

In addition to the Prince William group, strong efforts are afoot in Atlanta, Denver and California. Expatriates in Indonesia and Thailand also are active, Alborn and his cohorts said.

They said Park is planning a Coffee Party summit for next month, as well.

As Settle and Golden sat around a small table outside Starbucks, the spring sun shining and birds chirping, Alborn joked that the coffee chain would be the perfect underwriter for their group.

But then Settle piped up, reminding him that it would be hypocritical for a corporately sponsored group to attack politicians for heeding special interests.

So Alborn had to immediately trade his pragmatic fundraiser hat for that of a true believer.