Most of the tickets ran out quickly, particularly at the Ybor City location of Obama for America, which handed out 8,000 tickets to the public within 24 hours.

Former governor Charlie Crist spoke at the rally to introduce President Obama. Crist recently changed his registration from Republican to Independent before his Senate race in 2010. Political pundits were further surprised earlier this year when Crist made the decision to endorse President Barack Obama.

Addressing his political transformation, Crist said that as a Republican, Obama “was there for us” in supporting teachers, firefighters and many other important figures of Florida’s middle class.

Pointing attention to the legislation he passed to help students increase their Pell Grants and reduce interest on student loans, President Obama noted how important it is that “no child has their dreams deferred” because of financial matters.

“Higher education is no longer a luxury, but a necessity that everybody should be able to afford,” Obama said.

As a part of the platform for his second term, Obama promised to reduce the national deficit by $4 trillion and reform the tax code.

“It’s time that we grow the economy, not from the top-down, but from the middle out,” Obama said.

Another cornerstone of his new platform focuses on exporting and manufacturing more of our own goods and controlling more of our own energy through renewable resources. The president’s plan is to “cut imports in half by 2020.”

President Obama mentioned several of the changes his administration has put in place and said, “We’re not going back, we’re going forward.”