The Memo: Angie Nixon’s shock Florida win gives fresh boost — and a new test — for the left
The Hill · C · trust 52/100
Comments: by Niall Stanage - 08/20/26 6:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Niall Stanage - 08/20/26 6:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied NOW PLAYING The left of the Democratic Party scored its biggest upset of the year on Tuesday — and it did so in Florida, a state that is usually inhospitable territory for anything adjacent to socialism.
State Rep. Angie Nixon (D) beat Alexander Vindman handily in the Democrats’ U.S. Senate primary.
Nixon, a progressive lawmaker and organizer who recently joined the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), beat Vindman by more than 12 points, despite suffering from a 16-1 fundraising disadvantage.
Nixon found success running largely on economic issues. She supports Medicare-for-All, free childcare and a significant increase in the minimum wage. Notably, those are all policies that poll strongly among Democrats at large — and, by and large. among the broader population.
Vindman had been best known as a central witness in President Trump’s first impeachment. On Wednesday, Trump gloated about Vindman’s defeat (“the most gratifying loss last night”) while also deriding Nixon’s chances in the general election.
She is, the president insisted, “a Radical Left Lunatic” who would “go down to certain defeat” in November against Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.). Moody was appointed to the Senate by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) as a replacement for Marco Rubio, who left the upper chamber to become Trump’s secretary of State.
Democrats, naturally, don’t see Nixon either as a “lunatic” or as one who is doomed to defeat. But they do acknowledge that she will have an uphill climb to win the general election, even at a time when Trump’s approval ratings are bumping around close to all-time lows.
Florida, having been a key battleground for years, has become safer Republican territory. No Democrat has carried it at the presidential level since former President Obama. Rubio won his 2022 reelection fight for the Senate by 16 points and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) won reelection two years later by 13 points.
Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist who was the Florida State Director in Obama’s 2008 victory, said that either Nixon or Vindman would face a “tough path” to get to 50 percent in November.
Asked if he believed the gradient was even steeper for Nixon, Schale said he could argue the case either way.
The pro-Nixon argument, he said, is that she has the capacity to energize voters, especially young progressives and the African-American community.
Notably, Nixon was victorious in Tuesday’s primary in low-income areas and in areas with large Black populations — a rebuke of sorts to those who argue that the current leftist energy is largely confined to affluent, young white people.
On the other hand, Schale noted, Nixon faces real obstacles in the increasingly Republican state. The basic partisan math, he said, requires Democratic candidates to peel off a significant number of voters who normally back the GOP if they are to have any real chance of victory.
“The challenge for Angie is: Who are those voters that voted for Trump and voted for Rubio and are going to vote for Republican state legislators who are also going to vote for Angie Nixon?” he said.
Defenders of Nixon note that her focus on economic issues plainly resonated at least in the primary. They say she should not be underestimated in the general election.
Some also note that Florida’s increasingly red hue can obscure some of its political complexity. For example, in 2020 Trump carried the state even while losing the national election to former President Biden. Yet, on the same day, Florida voters overwhelmingly passed an amendment increasing the minimum wage.
Nixon is seeking to capitalize on economic discontent and broad anti-establishment sentiment much more than an ardor for abstract socialist ideals.
In a TikTok video back in January, she cast herself as a fighter for working Americans who have suffered under the status quo.
“Florida, we have a problem: Corrupt politicians in D.C. are working for greedy corporations instead of fighting for the rest of us,” Nixon began. “Enough is enough. Something has to change.”
That’s the kind of message that has plainly resonated in other Democratic primaries this year, as incumbents have fallen to leftist challengers from New York to Colorado.
Florida Democratic strategist Jackson McMillan was one of the few to argue before Tuesday’s primary that Nixon had a real chance of winning. He told this column that the media focus on DSA was somewhat beside the point — especially given how recently Nixon had affiliated herself with the organization.
Speaking of her rise and that of similar candidates elsewhere, McMillan said, “It gets a lot of clicks to say ‘The rise of DSA,’ but I think they are mostly just offering solutions that the Democrats refuse to commit to.”
McMillan cited Medicare-for-All as one example, describing himself as “a capitalist” and business owner who is frustrated by the high cost of medical insurance for himself and his employees. Politically, he see the appeal of candidates like Nixon as having less to do with doctrinaire socialism than with a reaction against corporations and other monied interests “failing to honor the social contract.”
Others in the party, however, note the particular challenges for candidates of the left in Florida.
The state is home to sizable communities of Cuban-Americans, Venezuelan-Americans and Nicaraguan-Americans, many of whose family histories are characterized by memories of personal suffering at the hands of Marxist-inspired ’strongmen.’
Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster in Florida who is Cuban-American, was asked about the difficulties in the state for explicitly socialist candidates.
“It’s not ‘difficult,’” he responded. “It’s a non-starter.”
But Amandi argued that Nixon doesn’t fit so easily in the DSA box because of her history outside of the group, her lengthy record as an organizer and the trust she has built…
Read the original at The Hill →
Open in TruthVane →