For his one-man protest against the president, McGinty has been berated as a baby killer and a “dumb a--,” decried in letters to the editor of a local news site and hit with an anonymous, handwritten threat — a sign that even a town that is described as Disney World for retirees and markets itself as “Florida’s Friendliest Hometown” is not immune to the divisiveness of this political era.

“There was always a divide, but we coexisted,” said Chris Stanley, president of The Villages Democratic Club. “There would be some good-natured back and forth, but your neighbors were your friends. You’d have dinner with the Republicans because it wasn’t a big deal. … These days, the division in the country shows up best in The Villages because now the Republicans, they won’t golf with you anymore, or you don’t want to golf with them.”

The 120,000-person enclave is a Trump stronghold in a county the president carried by nearly 70 percent, where Republicans outnumber Democrats two to one and golf carts — the main mode of transportation — are adorned with Trump bumper stickers. A regular stop for GOP politicians and hopefuls, it is Republican to its roots, created by billionaire conservative developer H. Gary Morse, who donated millions of dollars to the party’s candidates and committees before his death in 2014.

Even employees of The Villages have been pressured to support the Republican cause, according to Politico Magazine, which noted in a 2018 feature on the community that the development firm encouraged them to donate to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign to show that “The Villages family is ‘all in.’ ”