EERFIELD BEACH, Fla. - Rose knows Social Security.
So do Harvey, Lou, Lenny and Jack. At the Century Village condominiums, where the average age is 75, most residents are experts on the federal retirement benefits they have received for years.
That makes them a tough sell for Texas Governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore, as the two continue to tangle over how best to structure Social Security. These are the voters who may well determine the outcome of the presidential campaign in Florida, a key state in the quest for electoral votes.
And they are listening very closely.
''The main issue around here is Social Security. ... It's been a boon for us,'' said Amadeo Trinchitella, 82, a city commissioner who is legendary for getting the condo residents to the polls, no matter their age or disability.
''And I don't think,'' he added of Gore and Bush, ''either one of them is on the right track.''
That sort of tough-minded political focus, rooted in the well-guarded self-interest of a huge constituent group, usually leads presidential candidates to shun talk of changes in the nation's most revered entitlement program.
''Social Security is either a magic bullet or a coffin nail for candidates over time,'' said Marilyn Roberts, a specialist on political communication at the University of Florida.
In the 1992 Democratic primary here, Bill Clinton blew Paul Tsongas's candidacy apart by accusing the former senator from Massachusetts of planning to cut Social Security benefits. And in 1982, congressional Democrats used Ronald Reagan's 1981 budget plan, with its proposed Social Security cuts, as a wedge to help win back 26 seats in the House. Most politicians since have confined themselves to declaring their undying devotion to the program.
This year, however, both Bush and Gore have taken the plunge as Social Security trustees predict that there is only enough money to keep the system going until 2037. At that point, incoming payroll tax revenue will cover just 72 percent of the benefits promised under law, a recipe for collapse.
Bush says he wants to preserve Social Security by allowing younger workers to keep a percentage of their payroll taxes and invest them in the stock market. He says they can get a greater rate of return, though he does not promise to guarantee benefits if the market drops. Bush has not specified what percentage of payroll taxes he would divert to private investment accounts, nor how he would finance the transition to the new system.
Gore, on the other hand, would leave Social Security benefits as is, shoring up the system with money from the budget surplus. In addition, he would create a new program in which the government matches savings set aside by workers in accounts that could be invested in the stock market.
Neither candidate has gone near the third-rail in the Social Security debate: Raising the retirement age for full benefits.
At this sprawling retirement community, with the standard issue 18-hole golf course and a dozen swimming pools, there are 16,000 residents, eight voting precincts and plenty of time for talk.
Inside the air-conditioned Century Village offices, there are heated denunciations of Bush's plan to allow people to invest a percentage of their payroll taxes in the stock market. And a discussion of Gore's plan turns into a confused shouting match that could have come straight out of an episode of ''Seinfeld.''
Rose Arkush, a former hospital administrator from Cincinnati, disapproves of Bush letting people invest money that currently goes to the government.
''The average person does not know anything about the market,'' she says firmly. Not that Rose and her husband, Lou Arkush, consider themselves average.
''We're almost millionaires, but we're not there yet,'' she said of their financial portfolio. ''We did well.''
Lou Arkush, Rose's husband and a former sales representative for Max Factor, said that unlike most people, he and his wife read company reports from cover to cover before making an investment.
He says he agrees with Bush that the rate of return on payroll taxes for Social Security is terrible compared to the history of the stock market over the last 40 years.
Still, he warns, ''We may be going into another 1929.''
Having lived through the Great Depression and the stock market crash of '29, most seniors here are horrified at the thought of risking money that was meant as a safety net.
''The stock market is a crapshoot,'' says Lenny Mitchenkoff, a retired construction supervisor from New York. ''Social Security shouldn't be invested in anything that can go down. I think that's the worst thing that can happen in this country.''
Jack Kessler, an electrician from New Jersey, agrees: ''I don't believe in gambling.''
Harvey Bernstein says he got out of the stock market at the beginning of the year, avoiding losses of about $500,000, he estimates. His cousin, he said, lost $2 million as the high-tech boom tanked.
''I believe investing in the stock market is inherently dangerous,'' said Bernstein, owner of a community newspaper in Rockaway, N.Y. ''We don't need our Social Security money to do it, we'll take our own money.''
Such caution about investment risks sounds like an echo of Gore, who has ripped the Bush plan as irresponsible. But seniors here are wary of Gore, too. When the conversation turns to the vice president's Social Security proposal, a shouting match erupts between Mitchenkoff and Jack Miller, a foreign language teacher from Westchester County.
Miller tried to explain that Gore would keep the same Social Security system, while allowing people to invest in the stock market from a separate account.
At the words ''stock market,'' Mitchenkoff exclaims sharply: ''Gore wouldn't do that! He wouldn't have anything to do with the stock market!''
Miller accuses Mitchenkoff of not reading the newspaper lately, which Mitchenkoff angrily denies. Like the former schoolteacher that he is, Miller pleads with him to settle down. ''Will you listen, please?''
These are the people whom Gore is counting on to win Florida the way President Clinton did in 1996, running against Bob Dole. This time, however, the popular Florida governor is the brother of the Republican nominee, and recent polls show the vice president trailing Bush by two to seven points.
In the political calculus of the Sunshine State, Gore needs the big numbers of South Florida Democrats to offset the more conservative Democrats and Republicans of the north who are likely to side with Bush. Gore also needs to win over the seniors who vote in large numbers, compared to the younger people who generally do not.
''If you do well with the seniors, you're going to do very, very well in the state of Florida,'' said Bob Butterworth, the attorney general who is chairing Gore's campaign here. The condo complexes, largely populated by emigres from the Northeast, he said, are ''organized by building and organized by floor. If you haven't voted by two in the afternoon, you get a knock on your door.''
But Dan Bartlett, a spokesman for Bush, said most Americans, including Floridians, don't believe that Social Security will be there for them when they retire.
''What Governor Bush understands and why his proposal is becoming attractive, is by giving them the chance to build wealth over a long period of time with market investments, we will have a solution to the long-term solvency of Social Security,'' Bartlett said.
Rose Arkush acknowledges that there are problems with Social Security, as Bush says. But she is willing to consider an even more radical remedy.
''Some people don't need Social Security and shouldn't get it,'' she says. ''And others need more.''
