Joe Gruters’ email notifications won’t stop ringing.
Since Donald Trump was elected president, the Florida for Trump co-chairman and state elector has received 50,000 emails. Apart from the sheer magnitude of emails, the subject of some of them teeters between offensive and obscene.
Some emails tell Gruters to “seek professional help.” Others are littered with four-letter expletives about Trump and Gruters himself.
Then there are a few that hit close to home.
“You're what's wrong with this country,” reads one email. “May Donald Trump one day rape your children too. Let's hope.”
Gruters says he isn’t angry with the people who send him these emails.
“I would be doing everything I could if [the election] had the opposite results,” he told Sunshine State News Thursday. “I don’t blame these guys ... I understand what their goal is, but my guess is, like many of the other electors, we are pretty solid in where we are at.”
Not only has Gruters’ inbox been blowing up, but he’s also receiving piles and piles of snail mail asking him to change his electoral vote to Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump.
He’s not the only one who has been bombarded by letters and emails.
Florida elector and Florida Veterans for Trump Chair Kat Gates-Skipper says she, too, has been overwhelmed by people reaching out to her.
Gates-Skipper says she’s received everything from letters to postcards, attorney correspondence and even Christmas cards from people who want her to change her mind -- and her vote.
“It’s one thing to bother me and to overload my mailbox but then to send me Christmas cards, it’s like bribery without sending me the money,” she said.
A wide variety of people have contacted Gates-Skipper -- and they’re not just the ones who are involved in politics.
“I get people from all walks of life. Doctors, lawyers, it’s so varied,” she told SSN. “Believe it or not, I read each of these.”
Gates-Skipper said most people thank her for her service as a Marine and then rattle off electoral college rules of why Trump shouldn’t be president. She said she didn't understand why people were choosing to reach out angrily.
“Four and eight years ago we were upset [about the election] but we didn’t do such things,” she told SSN. “We just took our results and kept on going.”
Their pleas, she said, aren’t going to change her mind.
“I’m very honored to be an elector but as a Marine I have an oath and honor that I would vote for whomever the Republican candidate was who won on Nov. 8. I’m going to carry out my oath and honor because that’s who I am,” she said.
Yet, Gates-Skipper says she, too, has received hate mail that’s crept under her skin.
“They’re telling me that I’m not a hero unless I change my vote,” she recalled of a letter that came from California. “[Another email asked] ‘how can you do this to your children and your grandchildren?’ They’re going to hate you because you didn’t protect [their] future.”
The experience seems to be common for Florida Republican electors, who will cast their ballots for Trump next week.
“For the most part most of [the emails] are respectful but there are many of them that are just belligerent,” Republican Party of Florida Chair and elector Blaise Ingoglia said.
Ingoglia receives 4,000 emails a day. He doesn’t read many emails, but he does read some, which he says tend to be combative.
“It’s how they’re asking you to change their vote,” he said. “[They say] ‘You’re probably too stupid to realize the electoral college was set up for this. Vote for Hillary Clinton.’ A lot of them are very belligerent against President-elect Trump. They ask us to vote for the popular-vote winner, which obviously our country is not set up to do.”
In spite of the criticisms, Florida electors say they aren’t going anywhere.
“Our country is so divided, people are just on both sides, thinking that the country is going to fall off the cliff because Trump won,” Gruters said. “In a couple years, I hope they send emails back over thanking me for helping send Donald Trump to D.C. to drain the swamp.”
Reach reporter Allison Nielsen by email at allison@sunshinestatenews.com or follow her on Twitter: @AllisonNielsen.
