Kamala Harris rally draws hundreds of golf carts in conservative Florida community, the Villages

[Pelican Press 0]

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Kamala Harris rally draws hundreds of golf carts in ************* Florida community, the Villages

On Saturday afternoon, around

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reportedly paraded through the Villages, a retirement community in Central Florida, in support of Kamala Harris for president — roughly 200 more than the number that

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showed up for President Biden ahead of the 2020 election.

Saturday’s rally was part of the newly minted Harris

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to engage Florida voters and recruit volunteers to boost Democratic support.

With roughly 30% of Florida voters affiliated with neither the *********** or Democratic parties, per the

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, some attendees saw the turnout as a sign of a notable shift for the largely ************* community.

“She will win, and we will show the world that the ******* States can be *******,” Villager Tracey Carpenter, who attended the rally with her husband, told

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.

“This country is ready for a woman president,” her husband, Luke Carpenter, said. “It’s not just about ****** or gender. She makes us better and she makes the world better. That’s what a president should do.”

Some Villagers paid homage to Harris’s viral nickname “Brat.” Meant to describe a defiance against social norms and expectations, it was popularized when pop star Charli XCX gave Harris the title in a

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post on X shared the day her campaign was announced on July 21.

“I can’t define it, but I’m a Brat,” Villager Kay Gibson, who plastered a lime green Brat poster on the back of her golf cart, told Villages-News. When asked what “Brat” means, another local simply replied, “It’s Kamala.”

Since her campaign was announced after Biden dropped out of the race last week, Harris, who’s called Florida a “critical state,” has raised $200 million and signed up 170,000 volunteers, according to the Associated Press. Of those volunteers,

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have been recruited from every county in Florida — higher than any other state, the campaign’s Florida director, Jasmine Burney-Clark, told

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.

Here’s why the turnout for Harris at the Villages matters.

Why the Villages, and Central Florida, matter

While President, Barack Obama won Florida’s

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in the 2008 and 2012 elections, the Villages — a ************* stronghold who’s residents are 97.4% white, according to the

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— has voted for the *********** candidate in every general election since 2000.

According to state

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, Sumter County, where the Villages is located, overwhelmingly voted for

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at 67.7% (62,761 votes), compared to Joe Biden at 31.68% (29,341 votes) in the 2020 presidential election. The 2016 election

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, with Trump winning 68.3% of county votes compared to Hillary Clinton at 29.3%.

A friend counted 427 golf carts in The Villages parade for Harris! And there were lots of cheering on the sidelines.

— VillagesLady (@LadyVillages)

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The county has been a regular stop for conservatives campaigning for office. Trump himself visited the Villages twice during the 2020 campaign, per

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.

Political tensions were on full display in the Villages, when a man at a pro-Trump golf cart rally shouted “White power!” in a 2020

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that was

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with the message: “Thank you to the great people of The Villages!”

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living in the Villages have pleaded guilty to voter ****** for casting multiple ballots in the 2020 election.

But Aubrey Jewett, political scientist at the University of Central Florida, said the excitement around Harris in the area is particularly noteworthy.

“It’s been a while since anyone could whip up enthusiasm like that,” Jewett told the

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. “The last time the Democrats really had that at the top of the ticket was Barack Obama.”

According to the

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, there are roughly 5.2 million registered Republicans in the state as compared to 4.3 million Democrats — with 3.5 million no-party voters and 365,000 third-party voters.

Get ready for a political parade like no other! Kamala Harris is bringing her presidential campaign to The Villages this weekend, and the highlight of the event is a golf cart rally that’s sure to be more entertaining than a *****-in-one. The rally will tee off at 12:30 p.m. on…

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— ******** Azn (@LMFireSystems1)

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Jewett said the real challenge is getting Democrats excited enough to vote. In Florida’s 2022 midterm election, the vast majority of Democrats didn’t turn out to vote, which led *********** Gov. Ron DeSantis to defeat Democratic challenger Charlie Crist.

“The blowout was because Dems didn’t show,” Jewett said.

“Voter turnout is what determines who wins or loses in any of these races,”

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Fentrice Driskell, Democratic Party leader in the Florida House of Representatives. “What we had in 2022 was a lack of enthusiasm, a lack of turnout. This is the absolute opposite situation now in 2024.”

DeSantis responded to the turnout in the Villages by asserting that the number of attendees does not indicate a potential Democratic surge.

“That’s a small fraction of the golf carts that descend on the various Villages courses for ‘dew sweeper’ tee times every morning,” he

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At Saturday’s rally, over a dozen Trump supporters showed up and waved red flags toward Harris supporters, with one telling

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that the excitement for Harris is “a honeymoon” phase that will weaken as the election draws closer.

Byron Donalds, a *********** congressman from Florida, believes that support for Harris will dissipate with time as Trump goes after her record.

“At the end of the day, this is about Kamala Harris’s terrible record versus a record of success from Donald Trump,” he said Sunday on Fox News’s

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. “She wanted Medicaid for all, which would have cost our country easily $100 trillion. She wanted the Green New Deal, the massive old Green New Deal, not the scaled down version they were able to get through Congress.”

Given the Villages’s voting record, even some Democrats are doubtful Harris will perform well enough in ************* Florida counties to make it all the way to the White House.

“Do I believe Kamala Harris is going to win Florida? No, probably not,” Reggie Cardozo, a veteran Florida political operative who served as deputy state director for Hillary Clinton, told

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. “For me, it’s a matter of: Does the vice president lose Florida by 5 points or does she lose it by 12 points?”

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a South Florida Democrat and former chair of the Democratic National Committee, however, is confident in Harris’s ability to win Florida. Only time will tell.

“Don’t sleep on Florida,” she told Politico. “Kamala’s candidacy just woke a sleeping giant.”

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#Kamala #Harris #rally #draws #hundreds #golf #carts #************* #Florida #community #Villages

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