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

On Saturday afternoon, around 500 golf carts 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 reportedly showed up for President Biden ahead of the 2020 election.

Saturday’s rally was part of the newly minted Harris campaign’s efforts to engage Florida voters and recruit volunteers to boost Democratic support.

With roughly 30% of Florida voters affiliated with neither the Republican or Democratic parties, per the Tallahassee Democrat, some attendees saw the turnout as a sign of a notable shift for the largely conservative community.

“She will win, and we will show the world that the United States can be united,” Villager Tracey Carpenter, who attended the rally with her husband, told Villages-News.

“This country is ready for a woman president,” her husband, Luke Carpenter, said. “It’s not just about color 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 viral 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, 9,000 have been recruited from every county in Florida — higher than any other state, the campaign’s Florida director, Jasmine Burney-Clark, told reporters.

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 electoral votes in the 2008 and 2012 elections, the Villages — a conservative stronghold who’s residents are 97.4% white, according to the Census — has voted for the Republican candidate in every general election since 2000.

According to state voting records, Sumter County, where the Villages is located, overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump at 67.7% (62,761 votes), compared to Joe Biden at 31.68% (29,341 votes) in the 2020 presidential election. The 2016 election saw similar figures, with Trump winning 68.3% of county votes compared to Hillary Clinton at 29.3%.

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

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 video that was later retweeted by Trump with the message: “Thank you to the great people of The Villages!”

At least four people living in the Villages have pleaded guilty to voter fraud 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 South Florida Sun Sentinel. “The last time the Democrats really had that at the top of the ticket was Barack Obama.”

According to the Florida Department of State, 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.

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 Republican 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,” added 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 wrote on X.

At Saturday’s rally, over a dozen Trump supporters showed up and waved red flags toward Harris supporters, with one telling Central Florida Public Media that the excitement for Harris is “a honeymoon” phase that will weaken as the election draws closer.

Byron Donalds, a Republican 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 Sunday Morning Futures. “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 conservative 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 Politico. “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.”