Hundreds of Democrats and some Republicans filled the SeaBreeze Recreation Center parking lot Wednesday morning to take part in a golf cart caravan for presidential candidate Joe Biden. The goal of the caravan was to deliver ballots to the Sumter County Supervisor of Elections Office at the Sumter County Service Center at Pinellas Plaza in The Villages.
Terry Osborn was one of the Republicans for Biden who joined the caravan. The five-year Village of Poinciana resident has been a Republican most of his life. Osborn has soured on Trump. Osborn said he “is tired of all the lies and the mismanagement of the pandemic.”
At least one member of the caravan could personally vouch for the former vice president.
“I have known Joe Biden for 40 years. He is one of the nicest people you will ever meet,” said Villager Nancy Condon, widow of Republican Congressman Frank Horton, who represented an upstate New York district for several years. Horton was known as a “Rockefeller Republican,” a wing of the GOP that has disappeared.
Her cart held a number of signs, one of which pointed out that more than 210,000 American lives have been claimed by COVID-19 since February of this year.
Villager Ray Kisner’s cart sported a sign, “Save the post office. Dump Trump” He, too, is not happy with the way Trump has handled the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the golf carts bore signs announcing that the occupants were Veterans For Biden and some carried signs declaring that veterans are not “losers.”
When the caravan reached the county building, two deputy clerks from the Sumter County Supervisor of Elections Office, Ryan Betzer and Melissa Steele-Matovu, were present to collect the ballots. Betzer and Steele-Matovu checked with the voters to be sure that they had properly signed the ballots before placing them into the ballot box. Betzer went on to explain that these ballots being dropped off by the caravan would be counted as they were received. Teams at the Supervisor of Elections Office have been working day and night to verify and tally the large number of ballots the office has received.
