While thousands streamed into a football stadium Friday evening in Mobile, Alabama to see Donald Trump, a much smaller crowd of committed conservatives unwound at a bar and mused over the good, the bad and the unknown of the unlikely Republican presidential front-runner.

They were volunteers and staff for Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a nonprofit group funded by industrialist billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, two of the most effective conservative activists in U.S. politics.

According to AFP, 3,600 people came to this year's annual Defending the American Dream Summit from around the country Friday and Saturday, taking in appearances by a handful of the 17 Republican presidential candidates. Trump was not invited.