Voters on the Republican-dominated barrier island were not nearly as enthusiastic about Donald Trump’s presidential bid as they were about 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, whose campaign and Super PAC contributions from local donors dwarfed the meager amounts raised by the current president-elect.
Only 62.3 percent of island voters cast ballots for Trump – far less than the 76.5 percent who went for Romney.
In fact, the beachside’s five precincts showed far greater support for Republican Sen. Marco Rubio’s successful re-election bid than they did for Trump, who received 7,552 votes to Rubio’s 8,399. Rubio’s total accounted for 69.3 percent of the 12,119 ballots cast on the island.
“That wasn’t his base of support,” Indian River County Republican Party chairman Tom Lockwood said of the island. “The Bush family has very strong ties to that area, and they weren’t backing Trump.
“And I’m not at all surprised by the support for Rubio,” he added. “He also has a very good relationship with Republicans on the barrier island. He has had a very strong base there, going back to his Tea Party days.”
The lukewarm support Trump received from island voters was predictable, given his inability to convince them to open their wallets. Republican donors from the 32963 ZIP Code contributed only $40,000 to his campaign and just over $100,000 to his Super PAC.
Those amounts are peanuts in comparison to the $1.2 million island-based Republicans contributed to Romney’s campaign and the $1.1 million they gave to his Super PAC four years ago.
Earlier in the just-concluded presidential race, island donors delivered more than $950,000 to Jeb Bush’s bid for the GOP nomination and contributed more than $1 million to the Right To Rise Super PAC that supported the former Florida governor.
The only big-money, pro-Trump contribution came from John Childs, who remains the island’s most munificent donor to Republican causes. He gave $100,000 to the Make America Number 1 Super PAC.
Hillary Clinton received 32 percent of the island’s votes, with nearly 6 percent of voters casting ballots for either third-party or write-in candidates. Overall, just over 60 percent of county voters chose Trump, while just under 36 percent preferred Clinton, who won only two of 37 precincts – in Fellsmere and Gifford.
Libertarian party nominee Gary Johnson received just over 2 percent of the countywide vote, and less than 1 percent went to write-in candidates. Curiously, 190 of the 760 ballots containing write-in candidates were cast on the island.