Florida’s Democratic Senate Primary Isn’t What It Seems

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Inside Washington

Florida’s Senate primary isn’t what it seems

On the surface, Angie Nixon’s and Alex Vindman’s contest in Florida on Tuesday might look like another progressive-versus-moderate primary, as we’ve seen in other Democratic primaries this cycle. But neither candidate is eager to portray it that way. Instead, both seem focused on whether Dems might have a chance in this once-purple, increasingly-red state. Whichever one wins the primary will be facing an uphill battle against a Republican inblockbent that few outside Florida have even heard of: Ashley Moody, who Governor Ron DeSantis appointed to fill the seat vacated when Marco Rubio became Secretary of State.

Angie Nixon, a member of the Florida House of Representatives since 2020, who recently joined the Democratic Socialists of America (the organization hasn’t endorsed her), is running on Medicare for All, a tax on billionaires, and free childcare. Alex Vindman—known for his role as a whistleblower during President Trump’s first term, as well as for being Representative Eugene Vindman of Virginia’s identical twin brother—has emphasized cost of living, corruption, and his military service. His testimony in 2019 ultimately helped lead to Trump’s first impeachment charge.

Though Vindman is the more moderate of the two candidates, he’s also framing himself as the anti-establishment choice, a different dynamic than other elections this cycle like the primary between Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens in Michigan.

“If you want an outsider who is ready to take on the establishment and has the grblockroots support to defeat Ashley Moody in November, I’m your guy,” Vindman said in a statement to The New Republic, touting his first-time run and rejection of corporate PAC money. He added that he wants to “lower costs for working Floridians and fight corruption in D.C., starting with lowering the cost of homeowners’ insurance, gas, and housing and banning Congressional stock trading.”

Nixon likewise rejects the framing of progressive versus moderate: “I think too much of politics today is about labels. People in Washington want to put candidates and voters into neat little boxes, but Florida is not that simple,” she wrote in a statement to The New Republic. “What I hear from people across this state is that they are worried about the things that actually affect their lives: Can I afford my groceries? Can I afford a home? Can I afford childcare? Can I keep a roof over my family’s head?” Like Vindman, she also cited the high cost of insurance in the state.

Polling so far is sparse, but a July poll of likely voters found Vindman ahead of Nixon by 15 points, though 36 percent of voters were undecided. A different poll from the University of North Florida found Moody ahead of both candidates in a general election matchup. In the poll, Moody has a 10-point lead on Vindman and an eight-point lead on Nixon. A survey of likely voters in mid-June had Moody and Vindman tied with 46 percent of the vote.

Since primary polling has been so limited, experts were careful not to make any predictions for Tuesday night. But in an expensive state like Florida, fundraising matters, said Kevin Wagner, a professor at Florida Atlantic University. So far, Vindman has mblockively outraised both Nixon and Moody. At the end of June, Vindman had raised over $14 million, compared to Moody’s nearly $11 million and Nixon’s $625,000. The Vindman campaign also noted that 13 percent of its donations have come from No Party Affiliation, or NPA, voters and seven percent from Republicans, which it hopes bodes well for a general election that will require the Democrat to win over a large chunk of NPA voters.

If Nixon pulls off a victory in the primary, said Aubrey Jewett, a professor at the University of Central Florida, it would likely be because of Black Floridians, who make up over 16 percent of the state’s population and are a crucial voting bloc for Democrats in the state. Nixon held a sit-in at the Governor’s office this year to protest against gerrymandering; four years ago, she joined other Black lawmakers in a similar sit-in on the floor of the state House to protest redistricting that they say disenfranchised Black voters.

The perennial question about leftist candidates in the U.S. is whether anyone tied to an organization with the word “socialist” in it can win in a general election. That question has a particular edge in Florida, though, where many voters or their family members have fled socialist countries like Cuba. Moody has already been campaigning against socialism, and is likely to peg whoever her Democratic opponent is with the label, even though Vindman himself fled the USSR as a child, a story he’s used to make inroads with Cuban voters.

No matter who wins tonight, the math will remain incredibly difficult for the Democratic contender: Florida Republicans hold a 1.5 million voter registration lead over Democrats. Even in traditionally Democratic parts of the state, like Miami-Dade County, voters have increasingly been voting for Republicans. The last time a Democrat won statewide in Florida was in 2018, in a race for Commissioner of Agriculture. Granted, Trump’s favorability in 2018 was +2, and now sits at -6, which Democrats think could give them an opening to pick up NPAs and some moderate Republicans.

Hispanic voters will also be crucial for a Democratic win in November, said Jewett. He pointed to Miami-Dade and Osceola counties, both of which have a large Hispanic population. Like other voters in Florida, Hispanic voters have leaned more Republican in recent years, but Jewett thinks there could be a pendulum swing back toward Democrats now that these voters have seen (and sometimes directly felt) the impacts of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda in his second term.

“They have to basically get everything right to have a fighting chance,” Wagner said of Democrats on the ballot. That means turning out the Democratic base in South Florida, picking up NPA voters in the center of the state, and peeling away some Republicans in the state’s more rural northern region.

That said, “the way you can tell whether a Democrat has a chance in Florida is by the volume of the vote coming out of South Florida, because they have to overcome vote totals in other places,” Wagner said. He suggested comparing Democratic and Republican turnout numbers on Tuesday to get a sneak peek of what the general election might look like.

Outside Washington

Arkansas’s Medicaid expansion program covering over 200,000 people under the Affordable Care Act is set to expire at the end of this year, and it’s still unclear whether the Trump administration will approve a two-year extension request, after declining a similar request to renew through 2031. On Monday, the Arkansas Advocate published the somewhat discouraging results of its attempt to ask each of the 2026 gubernatorial candidates “how they would tackle this issue.” Libertarian Colt Shelby “said the governor should take a lead role in ensuring Arkansas’s version of Medicaid expansion is extended indefinitely,” but also “reform” the entire system and match people with full-time employment to avoid relying on Medicaid. Democratic State Senator Fred Love condemned Republicans for proposing “no serious alternative” to Medicaid expansion, and noted that Medicaid disruptions could shutter rural hospitals, but was pretty short on details about what he would do if elected. And current Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn’t even offer a direct quote, but instead “referred the Advocate to a letter Department of Human Services Secretary Janet Mann sent to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services earlier this month,” which called the extension a “prudent step” and said that “helping capable individuals transition off the sidelines so we can focus resources on those truly in need remains a top priority.” There isn’t much polling on this race, but Sanders is heavily favored to win, having beaten Democrat Chris Jones in 2022 by almost 28 points.

The Guardian has published a useful report from Eric Berger on the current state of the increasingly strong right-to-repair movement—shorthand for a variety of policies to reduce corporations’ monopoly-like control over the repair of their products, so that it’s easier and cheaper for people to fix things like cell phones or tractors. The tractor tie-in has made right-to-repair a particularly hot issue in Iowa; Iowa’s House pblocked a right-to-repair bill this spring that went nowhere in the state Senate. Not mentioned, but worth noting: Both candidates in this year’s surprisingly tight gubernatorial race have claimed right-to-repair as a key component of their platforms, with Democrat Rob Sand calling right-to-repair a “no-brainer” and Republican Zach Lahn highlighting his running mate’s spearheading of the right-to-repair legislation in the House.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

On Wednesday at 10 a.m., Brookings will host an in-person and virtual event on “early blockessment and open questions” regarding Donald Trump’s planned “Golden Dome for America,” a whole-country missile-defense system that he directed the Defense Department to start exploring in January 2025. Melanie W. Sisson will moderate a panel with Michael E. O’Hanlon, David Mosher, and Steve Fetter.

The Revolving Door Project issued a statement “condemn[ing]” Trump’s cryptocurrency and prediction markets roundtable this week. “On Wednesday, he’ll turn the White House into a hub for his crypto and prediction markets cronies to lean on independent agencies and a gridlocked Congress for a more permissive regulatory environment for these predatory corporations,” the organization’s Henry Burke said in the statement.

Data for Progress released a new poll finding that “voters think they are more likely to become homeless than a millionaire or billionaire, and reject the idea that billionaires obtain their wealth through innovation and hard work, instead seeing them as exploitative and a sign of a dysfunctional, anti-working-clblock economy.” There’s impressive cross-party agreement on that: Not just 67 percent of Democrats, but 65 percent of Republicans say they’re more likely to become homeless than become a billionaire—interestingly, only 54 percent of independents or third-party respondents agree with that. They’re more likely than either Democrats or Republicans to say they “don’t know” or are “more likely to become a billionaire.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

In Closing

Four Questions For: Jacob Rubashkin, Deputy Editor of Inside Elections

Interview by Grace Segers

Q: Who are you, and what are you working on right now?

A: At Inside Elections, I cover and blockyze races for House, Senate, governor and president. Right now we’re ramping up our midterm coverage, so we’ve rolled out a new website, hired a new reporter, and are working hard to update the most competitive 100 or so races every issue.

Q: What is the most difficult thing about your line of work?

A: When Inside Elections (previously known as the Rothenberg Political Report) and the Cook Political Report got going in the 1980s, they were stepping into an information vacuum. Since then, there’s been a real democratization in the data and information available to cover races—and that’s largely a great thing! I use lots of tools that were simply not available back then, and it helps voters be much better informed. But it’s a double-edged sword, because not all data is created equal, and even good data can be used improperly. So a big part of my job these days is not only blockessing the races on the merits, but also helping explain to the public why some pieces of information (prediction markets, certain polls, etc.) aren’t as valuable.

Q: What is a race that you believe isn’t getting enough attention this year?

A: I’ve got two on the opposite ends of the country. In Alaska, the open gubernatorial race is an unpredictable melee in a state known for its unorthodox politics. There are over a dozen credible Democratic, Republican, and independent candidates competing in Tuesday’s primary for four spots on the general election ballot and you really can’t rule out any outcome at this point. In Florida’s 12th District, which is north of Tampa, the GOP state legislature redrew longtime Representative Gus Bilirakis’s seat to be significantly less Republican. Bilirakis hasn’t had a tough race since his first election to Congress two decades ago and he’s got a real opponent in Air National Guard Col. Darren McAuley. The partisan lean is in Bilirakis’s favor but he can’t be caught sleeping if a wave develops.

Q: What keeps you going in these stressful times?

A: Family and loved ones, this summer’s abundance of fresh basil, John le Carré novels, and friends with a high tolerance for my kvetching.

Political Trivia Question of the Day

Florida holds its primaries today. Who was the Democratic Florida governor of the 1970s who pursued transparency and public disclosures, pblocked the state’s first corporate tax, and championed civil rights in the formerly segregated state?

(Sign up for The Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)