Retirement community key to Fla. GOP primary win

THE VILLAGES, Fla. - Golf carts - tricked out with jump seats, flags, fancy headlights, and old license plates from back home in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, or New Jersey - zip around on the 90 miles of trails that wind everywhere in this sprawling retirement development, where the lifestyle is active and the votes are vital to Republicans.

They don't drive golf carts, but every GOP presidential and statewide candidate eventually stops at The Villages, home to about 84,000 people, spread through parts of three counties and three zip codes, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 2-1.

"You can't win the White House without Florida, and you've got to go through The Villages to win Florida," said Richard L. Cole, 68, a retired lawyer from Abington and president of the Republican club for the Sumter County part of the community.

Turnout in Sumter County, where most of the residents live, was 65 percent in last fall's midterm elections - the highest rate in Florida, and a factor in the victories of a pair of tea party conservatives: Gov. Rick Scott and Sen. Marco Rubio. Overall in Florida, about one in five residents is over age 65.

Already Florida is shaping up to play a crucial winnowing role in the Republican nominating process for 2012, aiming to hold its primary just after Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. Yet in Orlando on Saturday, party activists sent an early shock through the GOP race, giving little-known former pizza executive Herman Cain a straw-poll victory over the national front-runners, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

The net result, conversations with Republicans here Monday suggested, was to show that the race is wide open. Perry's finishing a distant second after Thursday's Fox News/Google debate raised questions about his relatively moderate stance on illegal immigration and his readiness for a national campaign. Romney placed third in the poll, which he did not campaign for.

Cole, who was a delegate to the state party conference where the mock vote was held, said he voted for Romney, figuring he is the most "viable" potential nominee. He was initially for Perry but was turned off when the Texas governor said critics of his policy subsiding state university tuition for the children of undocumented immigrants were heartless.

"I objected to his scolding me," Cole said. "If you disagree with him, then he says there's something wrong with you."

He also said Perry's calling Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" was not necessarily fatal, as senior citizens realize that they would not lose their own benefits and that changes are needed in the long term. But he said that even Republican senior voters would not agree that the program should be left to the states.

As for Perry's rivals, "Cain is a neat guy with a lot of assets, but he isn't going to have the money and the troops on the ground to win the nomination," Cole said. "People were looking at him as a 'none of the above' vote."

Consultants estimate it will cost at least $10 million to win Florida's GOP presidential primary, with TV ad time going for about $1.5 million a week.

And President Obama is looking vulnerable here. He narrowly won the state in 2008, but a Quinnipiac University poll conducted Sept. 14-19 among registered Florida voters found that 53 percent of the respondents said they didn't think Obama deserved a second term.

"Maybe we haven't seen the nominee yet," said Republican State Rep. Marlene O'Toole, 66, a Boston native and retired IBM executive. She would not say whom she supported in Saturday's straw poll.

"If only you could make the perfect candidate: the brains and experience of Newt Gingrich, the personality of Herman Cain, a bit of Mitt Romney's 'been there, done that, won't make the same mistake again.' My question is, who could honestly debate President Obama today? I didn't see anybody jump out at me. Herman Cain, maybe. But how deep could he go? I don't know."

Sumter County Commissioner Doug Gilpin, 54, who represents a big part of the development, did not go to the straw poll but likes Romney - especially if the former Massachusetts governor could be persuaded to put Rubio on the ticket as vice president.

He thinks Romney, with his executive and private business experience, would run an efficient federal government and understands the economy.

"We've been able to lower county taxes here seven years in a row with a commonsense conservative approach," said Gilpin, who moved from Tecumseh, Mich. "We decided to stick to our core mission. There are a lot of good causes everywhere, but you can't fund everything."

The Villages, stunning in its scope, seems insulated from the economic woes of the rest of Florida, where the unemployment rate is nearly 11 percent and bank foreclosures are piling up. Here, restaurants are packed, residents turn out for nightly dancing on the town square, and construction is proceeding on the next phase of the development, at a pace of about 200 housing starts a month.

After all, notes Cole, people set on relocating to a retirement home may buy a smaller one than they planned because of declining prices for the houses they sell up north, but "the clock is ticking" and a purchase cannot be deferred long.

"We are insulated to a certain extent, but I know a lot of families who are sending money north," Cole said. "It starts with a lot more at birthdays and holidays for presents, and sometimes ends up as help paying bills." A couple he knows recently sent their son cash they had saved for a new car, so the younger man would have a cushion to pay his mortgage.

"People will tell you their children and grandchildren are not going to be better off than they were," O'Toole said, "and they're upset about it."