Paul Ryan will campaign in Florida’s largest retirement community on Saturday with his 80-year-old mother at his side, ABC News reports. Ryan did not accompany Mitt Romney to Florida during his bus tour, fueling speculation that Ryan was actually a liability to the campaign in the state with a large population of seniors because of his Medicare plan.
Ryan will speak about Medicare in The Villages, the largest retirement community in the world. Ryan’s mother spends part of the year in a Florida retirement community called Lauderdale-By-The Sea and the rest of the year in Wisconsin.
As ABC reports, The Villages is a conservative community and already a top fundraising spot for Romney and his allies:
But if addressing a group of Florida seniors on Medicare reform is a challenge for Ryan, even as his drastic changes to the program would alter no benefits for those currently over 55, then Ryan is making his pitch to one of the friendliest lion’s dens possible: The Villages is a hotbed of pro-Romney money.
The retirement location itself made a hefty corporate donation to the main super PAC supporting Mitt Romney’s presidential bid. The Villages of Lake Sumter, Inc., the Florida retirement community that includes property development, golf and other recreational activities, donated $250,000 to Restore Our Future last June. Five individual residents donated a total of over $678,000 to the group, which also received money from utility, communications, commercial property, and investment companies located in The Villages, Fla.
