Chronicles – Socialism’s march through the Democratic Party continued in the least expected of places last Tuesday, as Florida’s Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful, establishment darling, and Trump impeachment witness Alexander Vindman was crushed by little-known Democratic State Representative Angie Nixon. Nixon, a self-described democratic socialist who wants Medicare for all, the abolition of ICE, and an end to all support for Israel, holds to all of these positions while also saying in a video posted on X that drag shows are “wholesome entertainment” for her children.
Earlier this year, Nixon, who will challenge incumbent Republican Senator Ashley Moody for the Senate seat held until last year by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, burnished her radical image by attempting to disrupt the state legislature’s vote on congressional redistricting, denouncing the measure with a megaphone while dressed in a pink jump suit. In May, she was arrested during a sit-in at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s office to protest the measure. And perhaps fatally among Florida’s heavily anti-communist Hispanic electorate, on Aug. 13 her backers, the Democratic Socialists of America, released a statement celebrating the centennial of Fidel Castro’s birth.
Vindman, a national celebrity for his infamous opposition to President Trump, moved to Fort Lauderdale in 2023 and launched a campaign centered on “affordability.” He has raised a reported $16.3 million to Nixon’s paltry $975,000—a sum so low that she apparently could not afford a single television ad. Vindman seems to have been so confident of victory that he refused to debate Nixon throughout the primary and appears to have planned a post-primary fundraiser on Nantucket to support what he likely presumed would be his continuing campaign for the general election. Yet he lost.
Nixon crushed him by 12 points in what the Hill called “the biggest upset of the year”—so far at least—and what President Trump hailed on social media as “the most gratifying loss last night.”
Florida Democrats, in the wake of this upset, are struggling to find a path forward. They have ceased to hold any statewide office. Their 300,000 registered voter advantage in 2018 has vanished and been replaced by a 1.5 million Republican advantage. In addition to all state offices, Republicans hold both of Florida’s Senate seats, 20 of its 28 House seats, and supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature. In Jan. 2023, at the height of his popularity, DeSantis memorably called the state Democratic Party a “dead, rotten carcass on the side of the road.”
With nowhere to go but up, the return to relevance has been a winding road for Florida Democrats. Earlier this year, a handful of Democratic candidates prevailed in off-year state and local elections, where moderation, a focus on affordability that mirrored Vindman’s, and, in some cases, military service records were prominently featured in their campaigns. In the absence of strong or united Republican opposition, several Democratic hopefuls prevailed in contests that drew national attention, including mayoral elections in Miami and Boca Raton, the Florida house district that includes Mar-a-Lago, and a state senate seat vacated by Republican Jay Collins, who left to become the state’s lieutenant governor.
Some Florida Democrats are also hedging against their party’s socialist trend. The Democratic nominee for the governor’s race to succeed DeSantis, David Jolly, is a former Republican congressman who only became a Democrat last year. In a joint CNN interview rebroadcast by Breitbart, incumbent congressmen Jared Moskowitz and Debbie Wasserman Schultz denounced the democratic socialist drift in their party and pledged to resist it. “I reject the DSA,” Wasserman Schultz said, “I reject the fringe left socialism that they are promoting.”
Moskowitz, who is one of only four incumbent Democrats nationally whose district is rated as a “toss up” by the Cook Political Report, leaned centrist to win a decisive primary victory over democratic socialist Oliver Larkin. Larkin had attacked Moskowitz as “DeSantis Democrat” because of the congressman’s reputation for bipartisanship and his acceptance of state and county-level administrative appointments from DeSantis. In his revised district, which leans redder than his old one, that may not be enough to head off Scott Singer. Moskowitz faces the popular former mayor of Boca Raton who won the GOP’s nomination for the district.
In spite of this growing red trend, however, some Florida Democrats are clinging to the socialist label. Many remember that Andrew Gillum, the former mayor of Tallahassee who was DeSantis’s Democratic opponent for governor in 2018, held far-left positions and was often described as a democratic socialist. He lost, but only by 32,000 votes. Wasserman Schultz, a white incumbent who switched districts this year to a new formation that includes a large black population, was widely criticized by fellow Democrats for competing against black candidates. She ultimately won by a plurality over four black opponents who divided most of the ballots, but the ideology was clear. Elijah Manley, a democratic socialist challenger for the district nomination, said Wassserman Schultz “stabbed us in the back, trying to take away Black representation” by which, presumably, he just means that she is white and presumed to run anyway.
Energized by her primary victory, Nixon shows no sign of slowing down as November approaches. “I’ve unseated incumbents before. I’ve been outspent 5-to-1,” she said the morning after her victory in an MSNOW interview quoted by the Hill, “Ashley Moody will be calling me ‘senator’ in November.” Nixon’s path to victory will be difficult in this red state, but she will have some help on the campaign trail—Alexander Vindman has announced that he “will be standing by her side in the fight against Ashley Moody.”