COLUMN: Florida is 'Ground Zero' in the race to be the President of the United States

Florida is set to be the cockpit of a brutal fight to the finish by Trump and Biden and I have a ringside seat because I live and work here. 

Florida is one of the key battleground states that could call this election. Every four years the result is razor thin in the Sunshine State. And the decisive force is its huge retirement population.

This is something I know about first hand having worked in this state and southwest Florida for 19 years - 14 of these as a critical care nurse in the local hospital and the last five years as a visiting nurse to many of the town’s elderly residents. 

One of the first memories I have of my orientation to the hospital, where I started in 2001, was the director telling us that no politician gets re-elected in Florida without having kept the senior population’s interests first, second, and third in his sights. 

And so here we go again.

Florida is a huge retirement state. Seniors have been migrating here from the north east and the midwest since at least the 1920s, bringing their vast pension funds and wealth to the region. 

As the US election enters its final week, this population group who help sustain the huge Florida State economy with its retirement resources will again be at the centre of the fight for Florida on election night. 

There is no doubt their support will tip the state’s 29 Electoral College votes and secure victory for either Biden or Trump.

Trump showed up on October 16 at Southwest International Airport, his fourth official visit to the state since his campaign began. He proceeded to downtown working- class Fort Meyers where he told seniors free Covid-19 vaccines were to be delivered to all nursing homes as soon as available. 

He also discussed other themes important to older Americans including the Medicare program, Social Security, and most importantly for them - falling drug prices.

Biden quickly responded in a statement to remind these Floridians that under Trump’s watch 15,000 of them have died already from the coronavirus, tourism is down 60%, and unemployment has tripled in the state. 

The Democratic candidate is making serious inroads into Trump’s lead among seniors. The President led by a whopping 14 points among seniors here in 2016 but today according to the most recent AARP poll, Biden is ahead by one point. 

It’s not just down to the pandemic either. Seniors are tiring of Trump’s style and belligerent behaviour. This week they were shocked to find out the President posted a photoshopped image of Biden in a wheelchair looking feeble and in a nursing home. 

Biden seized on the tweet to remind seniors in a Miami retirement community he was visiting what Trump really thinks of older people. Biden stated Trump thinks “you are expendable, you are forgettable, nobodies… that’s how he sees us and that how he sees you”.

However, Biden’s decency cannot erase from the minds of these seniors the sights on their TV screens over this summer, of the riots and protests which unfolded in America’s big cities. Trump keeps reminding them and accusing the Democrats of fuelling the unrest after the tragic death of George Floyd in police custody earlier in the year.

But there are other factors at work in this election. Naples, Florida and indeed the rest of the state has changed demographically since I first came here in 2001.

The high-end residents are still coming to their winter homes here and the fixed-income retirees from Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, still flock back here to their mobile homes every year.

In Naples, however, the year-round Latino population has dramatically increased with the influx mainly from the overcrowded Cuban Miami area and a new wave of young immigrants from South America.

It has energised the town. Retirees have no problem getting a carer to help them and Latinos are a good fit with the conservative retirees from middle America. 

I now have a female Cuban dentist who came to town last winter and who talks Spanish over me with her assistant as she checks my teeth. 

She bought the practice from my former dentist, an elderly Jewish man from New York. I wonder how she’ll vote. But I don’t wonder that she wants the Government on her back. 

Cubans are notoriously entrepreneurial, independent, and conservative. Trump religiously courts them and even has his main residence not far from their Miami heartland. They may help deliver Florida for him. 

Both Biden and Trump need these two diverse demographic groups to win this battleground state. Trump has strove to increase support from the Latino population in general but feels their concentrated presence in the Sunshine State a powerful voting block to win over.  

He has somewhat successfully pinned the socialist stigma onto his rival Joe Biden into their minds. This has resonance with Latinos, especially Cubans, who don’t trust that system of Government and feel they have already risked their lives fleeing from such a quasi- socialist state.

But Biden knows this young demographic group needs health insurance and repeatably tells them Trump is intent on destroying what they need most – the peace of mind that comes with affordable healthcare brought in under President Obama.

He is more popular here than Hillary Clinton was in 2016. He comes across as humbler and in touch with working-class people. 

However, he has to close the class gap - something brought home to me in the Blueberry Diner in 2016. Back then I was sitting at the counter here with waitress Jennie Marks watching Hillary Clinton on CNN talking about women “crashing through the glass ceiling” (a metaphor for them reaching equality with men in the workforce).

Jennie turned from the TV, poured me another coffee and nodded to the ceiling of the diner: “At least I don’t have a glass ceiling here to fall on top of me,” she laughed hoarsely and went outside for another cigarette. 

Clinton never reached blue- collar women like Jennie. But Biden’s two-points lead in Florida at present may be attributed solely to women who worry about healthcare more than men and like his polite manner. True, Trump has a problem with suburban women nationally but I doubt that problem exists to the same extent in Florida. Working-class women like his no-nonsense approach. 

Ask post office worker Juanita Rodriquez who I met today packing the mail boxes in the 80-degree heat near my house. “Who are you voting for in November?” I called out to her. “I vote for our President,” she shouted back in heavy-accented English. 

So, who has the best chance of winning Florida on election night? Trump could shade it solely because of his stamina to keep going. He feels it’s a matter of pride. 

If Trump loses Florida, no matter what happens nationally, it will be a bitter pill for him to swallow considering he made the state his official residence some time ago.

But this time Biden is hot on his heels and invigorated with his small lead in the polls here. Democrats can sense a win here and they’re pulling out all the stops. 

As the count starts here in Florida on November 3, 2020, the world will be watching closely to see who will win the state that may decide who will be the next President of the United States.

Also watching, but in the shadows, will be hundreds of lawyers already flocking here to challenge the results. They may very well darken that famous Florida sunshine by the morning.