SEBASTIAN, Fla. - Surrounded by a crowd of aging bikers and classic Harleys that populate the longtime Treasure Coast hangout known as Earl's Hideaway and Tiki Bar, former Californian Rodger Bolling should be reveling in retirement: The sky is blue, the beer is cold, and he lives in the Sunshine State.
But that's exactly the problem, Bolling, 67, a tax law instructor and attorney, said. "This election is going to be very, very close -- and Florida is the most important of the undecided states," said Bolling, a proud Democrat wearing an "Obama Got Osama" baseball cap. "I'm scared to death."
In a state that for months has been lavished with nonstop attention from Republican Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama, Florida's seniors -- who represent about 17 percent of the state's 18.8 million residents -- could hold the key to the future for millions of Americans.
Politics in this must-win November electoral prize are a lot like the gators: ornery, unpredictable and with the potential for razor-sharp consequences.
The ballot-box clout of older Floridians will be in the spotlight in the wake of the Republican vice presidential selection of Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the author of a controversial House budget proposal to revise Medicare and a leading proponent of entitlement overhaul, including Social Security.
"My biggest issue is Social Security," said Ray Johnson, 63, a retired AT&T employee from Iowa who sat in the bar a few seats from Bolling. "I want it to be there for me, and my nieces and nephews coming up."
But as he looks at his choices in election 2012, Johnson, who voted for Obama in 2008, said he's torn.
"Romney, I just don't know where he's going. ... He's all over the place," Johnson said. "Obama? I don't think the Republicans are going to work with him. And nothing is going to get done."
A few miles away in Vero Beach, senior voters were animated in their assessment of the election stakes as they gathered around the pool in the clubhouse of their retirement community for coffee.
Retired Connecticut postal worker John Allen, 61, said he voted for Republican John McCain in 2008, but he's convinced that Romney "doesn't understand the working man."
As many retirees worry about rising costs and health care, Romney is "for the 1 percent -- and I'm not part of them," Allen said.
But Jim Tornabene, 76, a retired New York firefighter and former Democrat with a good pension, has become a Republican -- and plans to vote for the former Massachusetts governor.
"He's a capitalist, and I support capitalism, not poverty," Tornabene said. "It used to be the Democratic Party. Now it's the welfare party."
John Pickering, history professor at Lynn University in Boca Raton predicts "if Obama carries Florida, that means Romney will have to carry all the other undecideds," he said. "So it's not just somewhat significant -- and now Medicare could change the dynamics."
But he and other pundits in the state said seniors are just one piece of the puzzle in winning Florida's treasure chest of 29 electoral votes.
With its vibrant mix of Caribbean black and Latino urban communities, coastal senior citizen havens, rural conservative Panhandle hamlets and military base voters, a presidential election in Florida "is a game of inches," said Lance deHaven-Smith, professor of public administration and policy at Florida State University.
Romney and Obama have focused on the Interstate 4 corridor along which almost half of all Floridians reside; it stretches from Tampa in the West to Daytona Beach in the East and remains the hot spot where "the election is decided," deHaven-Smith said.
The Interstate 95 route along the East Coast to Miami is a haven for more liberal New Yorkers and Northeasterners, while the Interstate 75 route on the Gulf Coast to the west is stocked with more conservative transplants from the Midwest.
Hugh Gladwin, director of the Institute for Public Research at Florida International University, says that for the next week, Floridians of every political stripe will get a front-row seat at the theater of "good old-fashioned politics."
"It's like the Olympics, but a whole lot more," Gladwin said.
CARLA MARINUCCI, San Francisco Chronicle
SEBASTIAN, Fla.
Surrounded by a crowd of aging bikers and classic Harleys that populate the longtime Treasure Coast hangout known as Earl's Hideaway and Tiki Bar, former Californian Rodger Bolling should be reveling in retirement: The sky is blue, the beer is cold, and he lives in the Sunshine State.
But that's exactly the problem, Bolling, 67, a tax law instructor and attorney, said. "This election is going to be very, very close -- and Florida is the most important of the undecided states," said Bolling, a proud Democrat wearing an "Obama Got Osama" baseball cap. "I'm scared to death."
In a state that for months has been lavished with nonstop attention from Republican Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama, Florida's seniors --
PRINT
