The Villages is a 55-plus retirement community located in Sumter County, Florida that has not voted for a Democratic candidate in a general election since 2000. In 2020, Donald Trump won 67.8% of the vote compared to Joe Biden’s 31.7% in the county. In 2016, Trump won 68.8% to Hillary Clinton’s 29.5%. In 2008 and 2012, when Barack Obama carried the state, 63% of ballot castors in Sumter voted for John McCain and 67.2% for Mitt Romney, respectively. In other words, it’s an extreme Republican-stronghold—which makes new enthusiasm for Kamala Harris there not great news for Trump!
Over the weekend, hundreds of golf carts paraded around the Villages in support of Harris’s candidacy, reportedly creating a traffic jam as they showed their excitement for the VP. “Young people are energized and so are we,” resident Joyce Wiegand told Villages-News. Said her friend Karen Wink: “Kamala isn’t just for young people, she’s for all of us. She supports Social Security, Medicare and health care. That matters to us.”
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Diane Ruggiero, a registered Republican, told the outlet Harris “gives us all hope,” adding: “She is someone to be positive about. I’m tired of all the negativity—who we don’t want and who we don’t like. Now we have someone to like and be happy and excited about. I’m trying to be less negative and it’s great to be for something instead of against so many things.” While the Villages residents are a whopping 97.4% white according to the Census, when asked about voting for a person of color, resident Jim Guy said, “That’s not a problem. What matters is she is a high-quality, experienced individual, and she cares about working people.”
While Florida may remain a long shot for Democrats, Aubrey Jewett, political scientist at the University of Central Florida, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel the excitement about Harris’s candidacy is clearly noteworthy. “It’s been a while since anyone could whip up enthusiasm like that,” he said. Also noteworthy: the fact that Florida governor Ron DeSantis felt the need to comment on it, claiming it is much ado about nothing.
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Speaking to Politico, South Florida Democrat representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz declared: “Don’t sleep on Florida. Kamala’s candidacy just woke a sleeping giant.”
GOP senator’s attack on Kamala Harris does not receive the response from Fox News he thought it would
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