Sanders Backs Nixon After Stunning Florida Primary Upset
Sanders Backs Nixon After Stunning Florida Primary Upset
The News
Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon for U.S. Senate on Thursday, two days after she pulled off a double-digit upset in the state's Democratic primary.
Nixon, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, beat former national security official Alex Vindman — who outraised her nearly 17-to-1, according to Axios — and now faces Republican Sen. Ashley Moody in November in a state forecasters rate as an easy GOP hold.
Since winning, Nixon has spent the week telling national interviewers that she is not a socialist.
Timeline
Nixon works as Sanders' African American outreach deputy field director, Axios reported.
Nixon unseats a sitting Democrat in Florida's state House, winning by 20 points with backing from progressives, unions and the local chamber's political arm.
She leads a sit-in against Gov. Ron DeSantis' congressional map and livestreams the confrontation after Republicans cut the House cameras.
She disrupts another redistricting vote with a pink bullhorn and is arrested during a sit-in outside DeSantis' office.
DSA activists question her socialist credentials as she seeks the group's endorsement. In screenshots first reported by Politico, a Miami organizer calls her "good on Palestine" and close to unions and movement groups, but "not a socialist or DSA member."
Nixon wins the Democratic Senate primary — without endorsements from the DSA, Sanders or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Axios calls it the biggest upset in modern Florida Democratic politics.
Sabato's Crystal Ball moves the race back to Safe Republican.
Sanders endorses her. In an NBC News interview the same day, Nixon says, "Ashley Moody knows that I'm not a socialist."
Reactions
"Taking on Ashley Moody and her billionaire friends will not be easy," Sanders said in a statement. "But we will win this fight because when working people stand together, there is nothing that can stop us."
Nixon told Axios she does not campaign as a member of any organization and does not "believe in labels." Asked directly if she is a socialist, she laughed and said: "No. I own a business" — a Jacksonville bookstore called Cafe Resistance. She said she does not back abolishing all prisons, only for-profit ones, and does not support defunding police or open borders. She also said she does not celebrate Fidel Castro and disagreed with the national DSA's commemoration of the late Cuban dictator.
Moody has already made the DSA membership her line of attack. "You're gonna have one side that I'm gonna be up against that wants to, and the platform says, defund the police, don't fund our military, open up the border, noncitizen voting," Moody said in her primary victory speech. "I could go on and on."
The National Republican Senatorial Committee says the label sticks. "Socialism has no place in the Sunshine State and Floridians will reject socialist Nixon in November," NRSC spokesman Nick Puglia said.
Conservative outlets are amplifying her rhetoric. Townhall highlighted a clip in which Nixon says of Republicans: "They are not trying to work across the aisle. They are literally trying to kill us." She went on to say, "ICE is now a weaponized paramilitary force that is designed to terrorize us." Breitbart reported Sanders is stumping for her and called her attempt to distance herself from socialism an effort to "rewrite history."
On the left, The American Prospect framed the win as a democratic socialist building "the coalition that has long eluded the left." Mother Jones argued Florida Republicans have "a very short playbook" — calling every Democrat a socialist. The Miami Herald asked whether the result says more about the state's cost of living than its ideology.
What's Next
Nixon faces Moody in the November general election. Moody was appointed to Marco Rubio's Senate seat when he became President Trump's secretary of state, and previously served as Florida attorney general.
The open question is money. "For Senate Democrats, the silver lining of this change might be that Florida now looks less attractive to donors," Sabato's Crystal Ball analyst J. Miles Coleman said Wednesday, noting contributions would "presumably be more likely to end up in more competitive states" — with Michigan, Maine and Ohio all needing expensive investment if Democrats want the majority.
Nixon says she will campaign with progressives and moderates alike, including David Jolly, the ex-Republican now running as the Democratic nominee for governor. Jolly has said he likes Nixon but rejects socialism and the DSA.
More
Most public polling of the race assumed a Moody–Vindman matchup. One exception, a mid-July University of North Florida poll, found Nixon performing better against Moody than Vindman did — while still trailing by 8 points.
An Axios analysis of precinct data found Nixon's support rose the younger and more heavily black a precinct was; Jolly's ran the opposite way, rising as precincts got whiter and older. Whether those two bases combine is the central test of the Democratic ticket in Florida this fall.
The DSA itself did not endorse Nixon and, Axios reported, national leaders were blindsided by her win. The national DSA declined to comment.
Nixon's platform, per her campaign website, includes rebalancing the federal budget away from the military, stopping all deportations and universal health care. She has called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal — a position Axios notes puts her at odds with pro-Israel Jewish voters, and one that lands in a state where large Cuban, Venezuelan, Colombian and Nicaraguan communities equate socialism with oppression.
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