Monday John Kerry was here, not just in West Palm Beach, but in my own condo development. That he had a special rally for my gated community gives you an idea where I live. Could call it "New York of the Palm Beaches" - possibly 90% Democratic, mostly retired teachers, civil servants and other union types. With an overwhelming Jewish audience (maybe 15% Italian), Kerry lied through his teeth about what a great supporter of Israel he's always been.

Two days earlier, on Saturday, I was a volunteer at a Bush rally which drew as many as 10,000 in the outskirts of West Palm Beach. Bush's performance was clearly superior to Kerry's. A lousy debater and uncomfortable in (hostile) press conferences, Bush is the better rally speaker. While a populist rabble-rouser and demagogue in content, in style Kerry lectures and perorates from high above his audience, is pompous and ponderous, lacks warmth, and generates little genuine enthusiasm. Bush on the other hand is down to earth, passionate, sincere, and warm. And, surprisingly, at a rally he comes across as fluent, articulate, and self-assured, driving home key points without missing a beat.

I wasn't at the GOP convention, so this rally was the biggest concentration of Republicans I had ever been a part of. Lots of families, lots of children, lots of young people (a couple wearing your T's, Elizabeth). One of the more touching experiences I had was this young, Southern-sounding young woman coming up to me and asking me where I got my Bush-Sharon button. I told her I sold them and asked her if she was Jewish, to which she replied that she wasn't, that she was Christian but that she loved the Jewish people and Israel. She was disarmingly sincere and unaffecting. I gave her the button I was wearing.

Even though there were 10,000 of us - all in cars, of course - there were very few Bush-Cheney bumper stickers in sight. As in New York, we are invisible down here. At the end of the rally, while people sat in their cars in the afternoon heat waiting to pull out of the parking lot onto a long one-lane road (it took me two hours to get out), I went around and distributed dozens of buttons for free. People were very appreciative.

The rally recharged my emotional batteries. I had been setting up the B-C table all by myself in a flea market in Delray Beach, in what the natives told me was Indian territory. By all appearances all Democratic, and intensely hostile. It almost felt like 33rd Street and 7th Avenue. I was told, only half in jest, that the vendors were talking about hanging a rope from the awning over my table. On my third day there, the local Kerry campaign decided to try to chase me away and sent about ten people with picket signs to surround my table, make lots of noise, and hurl epithets. I was tarred with a new slur: "wealthy," accused of working for Bush because of the big tax cuts for the rich he was going to shower me with. By this time Eunice, a customer who had lingered a while by the table, decided to fight back and grab bed a Bush sign and started to rally whatever pro-Bush people came our way. All of a sudden we found out we were not alone, that there were Bush supporters around, they were just quiet and didn�t want to make a fuss.

A constant theme at the table is how the Kerry people try to intimidate Bush supporters. There are tales about people going to the Clubhouse in their condos and coming back to find that their Bush stickers have been scratched out. Others speak about lawn signs being ripped off during the night. Some elderly women talked about wanting to buy some buttons, but being afraid to wear them because Kerry people might rip them off their shirts.

In my gym the other day a guy climbed on the treadmill next to mine and started crowing about how his teachers union in Boca had called him to pick up and distribute bumper stickers for Kerry. He just assumed I was a Kerry supporter. Kerry bumper stickers and lawn signs are everywhere. And everybody seems to be donning Kerry buttons, even in the gym. I'm getting up my courage to walk into the gym wearing a Bush-Cheney t-shirt, a move that might cause a collective heart attack or a stampede for my throat. We have four TV screens in the gym, tuned to CNN, FOX, MSNBC and ESPN. But at least a couple of times a week I walk into the gym to find that FOX is gone and in its place is a local Palm Beach station.

Such small acts of aggression, intimidation and suppression are constant. Yesterday I went to hear Ari Fleischer speak at a synagogue in Delray, an event sponsored by the local Republican Jewish Coalition (Koch is coming next week to a similar event in Boca). Ari is a total riot. He had everyone in stitches. He gave an excellent speech, spiced with anecdotes and personal memories, some poignant. Well, the Kerry people couldn't help themselves. They sent activist to distribute anti-Bush flyers right inside the synagogue, and even after being told to stop, they would persist. Then, when we came out, we were all greeted with anti-Bush brochures stuck under our windshield wipers.

Until doing the B-C table, I believed that the attempt to silence conservatives and right-of center people was restricted to the radical Left and activists, particularly in places like New York or college campuses. But after 33rd and 7th, and particularly after coming to Florida, I�ve come to the conclusion that this "no free speech for fascists" ideology is a more widespread phenomenon. It appears that average, ordinary, run-of-the-mill liberals want to shut us up. I've had little old ladies and thoroughly respectable-looking older "gentlemen" hurl insults at me in Florida. A child no older than eight put her head out her car window, stuck her tongue out at me, and booed after seeing the Bush bumper stickers (and perhaps my "Choose Life" license plate) in the rear of my van. Guys yell "Bush sucks" as they drive by. We all know about this kind of stuff from what we read in our books and magazines, hear on talk radio, or watch on FOX. It's another thing to experience it personally as a matter of course (and you only experience it personally if you come out of the closet and show publicly who you are and what you believe). The lack of civility feels at times as intimations of a civil war.

The Kerry campaign down here is more visible than Bush's, a sign probably that they are better organized. I'm working out of a GOP Action Center, for example, that has no buttons to give to people who show up at the office looking for ways to display their support for Bush. When people ask, I go outside to my van and sell them (at cost) the stuff they need (I even have to go outside to sell to other volunteers in the office, most of whom by now are decked out in gear they�ve gotten from me). There are no Bush balloons inside the office, and I can�t even give them mine free of charge for some bureaucratic reason. We worked on stamping dozens of cartons of a beautiful brochure about Bush and Israel, but I can�t get a carton to distribute in my mostly-Jewish complex. And so on. Lots of rules and regulations, and lots of lawyers vetting every detail.

Still, there�s a lot of good stuff happening here, and I'm grateful I've been able to add my two cents, both within the official campaign, and off on my own. There's a lot more happening, and next week we'll be walking door to door to get the vote out.

Yesterday I helped an octogenarian Italian-American neighbor fill out an absentee ballot request form for John Kerry. When the ballot comes, I'll help her fill it out so she can vote for her man and probably the entire Democratic ticket. Would the average Kerry supporter do the same for a half-blind old lady who wanted to vote for Bush? I wonder.

Regards,
Ray Agostini