'Awake Again' Protester: Trish Curran

About 25 protesters assembled Tuesday outside the offices of State. Sen. Mike Bennett along Cortez Road as part of the "Awake Again" rallies held around the state. Bradenton Patch talked with some of the protesters to get their views on Gov. Rick Scott,  the recently wrapped session of the Florida Legislature and last week about voting in Florida.

Name: Trish Curran.

Profession: City planner.

How long have you been in Manatee County?: Two years.

Why did you come out to Tuesday's rally?: Because of all the issues involved with the Republicans in Congress and Republicans locally that I'm against.

What should Gov. Scott do differently?: Resign. Because he's really an unethical person who really should have been in jail as a Medicare fraud, so he shouldn't be running the state. Plus, he talked about creating jobs when actually, in effect, since he's fired out all these people at the state level and cutting out funds for a lot of stuff, he's actually cutting down jobs. I'd like to see where he's actually creating any jobs at all.

What do you think about Sen. Mike Bennett?: He's not much better. I tend to pay as little attention to possible to local people because they're all Republicans and they're all in favor of offshore drilling. They don't care about the environment. They don't care about women's rights. And another thing which is bad is they're cutting education funds. Just think about the education budget. It's decimated. And I've got to tell you, coming from Washington, D.C. and Virginia, there's an excellent school system up there. Florida's school system stinks to begin with, and now he's cutting out all this extra stuff. It's just terrible.