Angie Nixon, a progressive state representative from Jacksonville, won Florida’s Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat on Tuesday, a result the Associated Press and NBC News projected as a decisive upset. She now advances to the November special election against Republican Sen. Ashley Moody, who is running to serve the remainder of Marco Rubio’s term after Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed her to the seat Rubio vacated to become secretary of state.
The margin was wide. Nixon took about 56 percent of the vote with nearly all precincts reporting, according to Spectrum News, and won by double digits, per Axios, running up especially large numbers in her home region of Duval County.
She won despite being heavily outspent.
The Washington Post reported that at the end of July, her opponent held more than $7 million in the bank to roughly $265,000 for Nixon. Axios put the overall fundraising gap even wider, at about $16.3 million to $975,000, and the Associated Press reported that Nixon was outraised by more than 16 to 1. According to The Washington Post, she built her campaign on support from labor unions, Black churches and the Democratic Socialists of America, which she joined only weeks before the election.
Nixon is a native of Jacksonville’s Moncrief neighborhood and a University of Florida graduate who has served in the state House since 2020, first winning office by defeating an incumbent. A former single mother, small-business owner and community organizer, she leaned into that biography in celebrating the win. “A former single Black mom from Moncrief, just became your democratic nominee for U.S. Senator. Good things do come from the Northside,” she wrote on Facebook, as reported by News4Jax.
In office, Nixon has built a reputation as one of the most visible antagonists of Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-controlled legislature. Axios reported that she helped lead a 2022 sit-in during a redistricting fight and returned to the latest remapping battle this year with a pink bullhorn. The Washington Post reported that she staged a sit-in in the governor’s office to protest congressional maps she called gerrymandered, was arrested, and faces a trial next month, which she has turned into a campaign talking point on social media. Her platform, First Coast News reported, centers on Medicare for All, expanded child care and support for working families.
She has pushed back on the idea that her recent embrace of the socialist label would sink her in Florida, where, as The Washington Post noted, the term has long been politically toxic, particularly among voters who fled leftist governments in Latin America and the Caribbean. “We can argue about people’s labels,” she said in a CNN interview cited by the Post. “I care about people’s needs.” In her victory speech, reported by The 19th, she was defiant: “If wanting your neighbor to afford their insulin is radical, then call me a radical.”
The win carries broader significance. The 19th reported that Nixon is only the second Black woman to win a major-party Senate nomination in Florida. Axios framed her victory as a breakthrough for the Democratic Socialists of America and situated it within a wider national contest between the party’s progressive and establishment wings, noting that Abdul El-Sayed recently won Michigan’s Democratic Senate nomination, though he rejects the socialist label, while DSA member Francesca Hong narrowly lost Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primary. Axios also reported that Nixon posted surprisingly strong numbers beyond liberal strongholds, including in Miami-Dade County.
She defeated retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the former National Security Council official known for his testimony during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, who had been favored for his national profile and fundraising. He congratulated Nixon and said he would support her against Moody, according to multiple reports.
The general election will be an uphill climb. DeSantis appointed Moody to the seat in January 2025 after Marco Rubio left the Senate to become Secretary of State, and she won the Republican primary; the November race will decide who holds the seat for the remainder of Rubio’s term, through 2028. The Cook Political Report rates the contest “Solid Republican,” and no Democrat has won a statewide race in Florida in roughly a decade. Nixon signaled she expects a fight. “We know the attacks are coming,” she told supporters in Jacksonville, according to Axios.
If she prevails in November, Nixon would make history beyond the party’s decade-long statewide drought: she would become the first Black person to represent Florida in the U.S. Senate.
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