The Sun carries columns by pundits like Oliver North and Ann Coulter. Fox News plays on the TVs at every restaurant and rec-center gym. Romney, Ryan, Palin, Huckabee, and Gingrich all make regular stops at the local Barnes & Noble for book events or the town squares for campaign stops. Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by a margin of greater than 2-to-1 in The Villages, and in 2012, while Village Republicans enjoyed free office space to organize, one Village Democrat, who asked to remain nameless, tells me they were offered similar accommodations for $10,000 per month. She adds that cars with Obama-Biden stickers were reportedly vandalized, harassed, spit on, even threatened with shotguns. “Morse’s attitude toward us was if you don’t like it, you can leave." Another source, a retired Fortune 500 executive who has become active in local politics, says to me, "He's as powerful a man as there is in America."

One night Bob and Georgann escort me to the Laurel Manor Recreation Center, a huge brick colonial building decorated like a dollhouse, for the monthly meeting of the Property Owners Association (POA). The auditorium is packed and there's a full docket tonight; Bob jokingly refers to them more than once as "the conspiracy theorists." After the Pledge of Allegiance, the 250 or so attendees take up a collection for tonight's 50-50 raffle. Hours from the previous meeting are read.

Then the head of the POA, a wry Midwesterner named Elaine Dreidame, fields complaints from the residents. The snowbirds don't know how to drive the roundabouts! We need more stop signs on the cart path. I can hear noise from the polo fields and it's too loud! Elaine responds to almost every complaint with a glare of contempt. An administrator from the local school district is on hand to talk about the good work they're doing at the Villages charter school where all the local doctors and pool lifeguards and waitresses send their kids. A man in a tan jacket and tan pants walks to the microphone to complain that he shouldn't have to pay into the school system.

Chief among the challenges Schwartz faced during the early years of Orange Blossom Gardens was actually getting people to build homes on the land they’d purchased. He incentivized construction by offering landowners free cable TV, trash collection, and no trail fees on the executive golf courses for life. Over the next decade, as development spread to the other side of the highway, his son saw his opportunity to form a new corporation that would not honor the agreements they had with his father and pockets of resistance began to form.

All around me, men are dozing off. My head bobs too, momentarily, but Bob nudges me when Elaine gets to the main attraction: Tonight the POA is celebrating the five-year anniversary of its $40 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit against The Developer by inducting the five named plaintiffs (aka "the Class Action 5") into the POA's Hall of Fame. In 2007, they sued The Developer over his misuse of the monthly amenities fee that every household pays, claiming he’d failed to keep cash on hand for the maintenance of the swimming pools, rec centers, and golf courses. In the months leading up to the settlement, The Developer wrote a lengthy column in his paper describing what he termed the "politics" of The Villages:

The Villages' residents seem to divide into 3 basic groups. Group 1 is the silent group. They love living here. They don't want to bother with anything. They just want to enjoy the golden years of their retirement. Group 2 wants to help. They love living here and believe the can improve The Villages by working with their Developer. They gravitate toward the Villages Homeowner Association. Group 3 ... they love living here. But they believe the Developer's goal is to take advantage of the residents. They believe they can improve the Villages by challenging the Developer and fighting for residents' rights. They gravitate towards the Property Owners Association. The same one I worked with the day I arrived, March 1, 1983.

“We love working here. We love living here. But the residents need someone looking out for their interests,” Elaine tells me. “One or two people complaining can’t get anything here on their own.” Elaine’s other victories have been modest but vital: She helped 1,600 residents get replacement on vinyl siding that had been improperly installed; she saw to the repair of hundreds of leaking underground refrigerant lines, some of which had been capped with plastic shopping bags. Elaine’s an Ohio girl, had lived there her whole life, and before she moved to The Villages she had no experience in local government. She was a college volleyball and hoops coach and was active in the push for Title IX. "I’m fighting all the time,” she says. “It’s in my blood.”

Last summer The Developer put up a wall blocking golf cart access to a nearby strip mall with restaurants and retail and doctors offices that weren’t affiliated with The Villages. Residents started calling the pastel pink structure “the Berlin Wall.” Tensions ran high for a few days. As the Orlando Sentinel reported, someone even spray-painted "Mr. Morse Take This Wall Down." In short order a crane demolished the structure. Villagers gathered to watch the demolition. Afterward, refreshments were served.

Elaine and her friends on the POA are gearing up for another big fight. In 2008 an IRS agent took notice of some irregularities while doing an audit: After building a new amenity — i.e., a new rec center or swimming pool — The Developer then sells that amenity, along with the right to collect the $120 monthly fee that each household pays, issuing 30-year tax-free municipal bonds to the community development district (CDD) that he established to oversee The Villages. Put another way, The Developer is buying amenities from himself at an incredible profit and not paying taxes on any of it because he claims the sale serves a “wholly public purpose.” The Developer has pocketed around a billion dollars this way. The IRS, though, now thinks The Developer "perverted" the law, as an Orlando Sentinel report phrased it. (A representative of The Villages did not respond to requests for comment.)

Now the POA is worried that the burden of paying back taxes on $426 million of municipal bonds’ earnings will ultimately fall on the residents. The Villagers who are paying attention to the situation are scared: If The Developer doesn’t step in and help pay those, the money will have to be drawn from the community’s amenities funds and the physical plant could ultimately spiral into disrepair. Getting him to pay could require another lawsuit. “This whole arrangement is rotten,” one politically active resident tells me. “It’s like going down to Trump’s estate at Palm Beach and having him pick your pockets for the spare change when you’re not looking.”