Scott McIntyre for The New York Times SWEETWATER, Fla. — The Miami-Dade Republican headquarters has the look and feel of a single-family home where the single family has an especial devotion to Donald J. Trump. Matching love seats open the space, with one positioned under watercolor portraits of the president and first lady, the other decorated with needlepoint American flag pillows. From the corner of the room, a particularly lifelike cardboard cutout of Mr. Trump keeps watch. Then there’s the kitchen, cluttered with Post-it notes, to-do lists, mementos and a bulletin board with a photo of Kellyanne Conway pinned next to a print of Jesus Christ. “I live here,” Mariela Jewett says with a laugh, but it’s tough to tell whether she’s joking. Ms. Jewett, a 71-year-old Cuban-American, has worked for the local G.O.P. for 18 years, and she insists she hasn’t seen so much enthusiasm in the party since the Reagan era. On one afternoon in late February, the telephone trilled with the numbing frequency of white noise — a barrage that began after Senator Bernie Sanders extolled elements of Cuba’s communist dictatorship on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” Now, the office is closed because of the coronavirus — Miami-Dade has nearly 4,500 confirmed cases, and on Wednesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a statewide stay-at-home order after a conversation with Mr. Trump. Ms. Jewett said the crisis was “like a nightmare, like an old movie, like science fiction.” But she praised the president for his handling of it. “He’s covered every aspect,” she said. To spend any time among Republicans in South Florida is to be in an America as Mr. Trump would have it, where his support extends beyond his white working-class base and includes unabashed admiration from the wealthy, from immigrants (at least many from Cuba and Venezuela), […]
