The Villages is a 55-plus retirement neighborhood positioned in Sumter County, Florida, which has not voted for a Democratic candidate in a common election since 2000. In 2020, Donald Trump won 67.8% of the vote in comparison with Joe Biden’s 31.7%. 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. In different phrases, it’s an excessive Republican-stronghold—which makes new enthusiasm for Kamala Harris there not nice information for Trump!
Over the weekend, lots of of golf carts paraded across the Villages in assist of Harris’s candidacy, reportedly making a site visitors jam as they confirmed their pleasure for the VP. “Younger individuals are energized and so are we,” resident Joyce Wiegand advised Villages-Information. Mentioned her buddy Karen Wink: “Kamala isn’t only for younger folks, she’s for all of us. She helps Social Safety, Medicare and well being care. That issues to us.”
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Diane Ruggiero, a registered Republican, advised the outlet Harris “offers us all hope,” including: “She is somebody to be constructive about. I’m bored with all of the negativity—who we don’t need and who we don’t like. Now we now have somebody to love and be pleased and enthusiastic about. I’m making an attempt to be much less detrimental and it’s nice to be for one thing as a substitute of in opposition to so many issues.” Whereas the Villages residents are a whopping 97.4% white in accordance with the Census, when requested about voting for an individual of coloration, resident Jim Man mentioned, “That’s not an issue. What issues is she is a high-quality, skilled particular person, and he or she cares about working folks.”
Whereas Florida might stay an extended shot for Democrats, Aubrey Jewett, political scientist on the College of Central Florida, told the South Florida Solar Sentinel the joy about Harris’s candidacy is clearly noteworthy. “It’s been some time since anybody might whip up enthusiasm like that,” he mentioned. Additionally noteworthy: the truth that Florida governor Ron DeSantis felt the necessity to touch upon it, claiming it’s a lot ado about nothing.
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Chatting with Politico, South Florida Democrat consultant Debbie Wasserman Schultz declared: “Don’t sleep on Florida. Kamala’s candidacy simply woke a sleeping large.”
GOP senator’s assault on Kamala Harris doesn’t obtain the response from Fox Information he thought it might
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