Add Florida's Senate Campaign to The Toss Up Column

Can Angie Nixon, a Black, 42-year old  self- identified Democratic Socialist, with little financial support, win a U.S. Senate seat in Florida, a state where Republicans have a 1.5 million voter registration advantage, running against an incumbent GOP senator backed by the resources of the Republican state government and countless rich donors?

Nixon’s own Democratic party doesn’t think so. In fact, it officially helped her primary election opponent raise $16 million against her. The Republican party doesn’t think so. Nixon’s primary election victory was a “gift,” many party leaders said. 

You won’t find many political professionals or journalists giving her a chance, either.

But I do. I’ve been here before, working in campaigns written off by just about everyone who should have known better. Here’s why I think Florida’s U.S. Senate race could move from solid red to toss up in the weeks before November’s election.

Why Cost of Living Could Upend the Florida Senate Race

Let’s start with the candidate web sites.

Angie Nixon: “Angie is running to lower costs, raise wages, and build a people-powered government that puts families first—not greedy billionaires.”

Senator Ashley Moody: “My opponent, a self-proclaimed socialist, is campaigning with members of the Socialist Squad and running on an agenda to defund our police, abolish our prisons and military and raise your taxes. The race will determine Florida’s future—between a free and prosperous Sunshine State or one that turns into bread lines and empty shelves.”

Moody might have won the issue positioning fight in 2020, 2022 or 2024. But this year, according to polls, half of likely Florida voters list affordability as their top concern—not immigration, crime or abortion. Demonstrating she is even further out of touch, Moody’s web home page prominently features her with Donald Trump, promising to be one of his foot soldiers.

According to MIT’s Living Wage calculator, statewide, a single adult with no children needs to make at least $24 an hour to get by in Florida. If you live in Miami or other higher cost areas, or have children, that number obviously is higher than $24. According to Census Bureau data, millions of teachers, food service workers and others in the 20 most common state occupations don’t make that cut. Florida’s minimum wage is $14 an hour.

But does that matter? Registered Republicans in Florida outnumber Democrats by 1.5 million. 

Yes, and Republicans have been dominating Florida elections for years. Look closer, though. GOP registration amounts to 40% of the state’s registered voters. Sixty percent aren’t. Republicans have been benefiting from a Black voter turnout that’s 10-13% lower than White, and a Hispanic community largely influenced by Cuban and abortion issues.

Those numbers likely won’t hold up this year. Not with the way Hispanic voters have been reacting elsewhere to Trump’s indiscriminate immigration crackdown. Miami, which is 75% Hispanic, recently elected a Democratic mayor for the first time in 30 years. As for the Black vote, it’s surging in other states. Florida won’t be an exception. Certainly not with the opportunity to elect a Black woman to the U.S. Senate. Together, Blacks and Hispanic voters total more than 40% of Florida’s potential vote.

Grassroots Organizing and the Media Event That Changes the Profile

Florida, with its 23 million people, is one of the most expensive states for statewide candidates.  So how will she get known statewide, or fend off attacks against her?

On September 21 Nixon will go on trial, charged with trespass and resisting arrest. The charges stem from the sit-in at the governor’s office she organized to protest the state’s new reapportionment alignment in which Republicans hope to gain five more Florida congressional seats. In Florida polls, 56% of respondents oppose that action. 

It’s possible that media from the trial will cast Nixon as a showboat legislator who should have followed the rules and obeyed the law. More likely, it will give her a golden opportunity to vastly increase her statewide profile, and do it positively, while fighting for an issue most Florida voters agree with. Her trial, a jury trial, has the makings of her largest media event of the campaign. 

Before she was elected to the Florida state house, Nixon was field director for the Service Employees Union and its 800,000 state members: public employees, health care workers, teachers and other professionals. She has the opportunity, and demonstrated savvy, to mobilize foot soldiers in nearly every Florida community. These days, that’s not just door knocking and envelope licking. It’s that, plus social media, email, deft targeted of streaming media and an arsenal of new weapons that tech-focused campaigns can use to reach voters without massive, expensive TV buys.

Also worth noting. Ashley Moody, her opponent, was appointed to the Senate to fill the vacancy left when Marco Rubio became secretary of state. This is Moody’s first campaign for the Senate. She was appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis, who currently is enmeshed in a high visibility campaign funding scandal. 

Turning Big Money Against Itself in an Unpredictable Campaign

One more note: With this year’s billionaire backlash, opposition candidates have an opening to wage jujitsu campaigns: turning big money against itself. Nixon’s primary opponent raised $16 million. She defeated him spending less than $1 million.

Campaigns are dynamic events. Even the best ones can go off the rails. A tired candidate’s ill-chosen words; a top campaign aide’s drunken driving, an untimely health episode, events beyond the campaign that a candidate can’t control. For instance, the effect of a Cuban government’s collapse before November. That could happen. So could a devastating hurricane.

Predictions are for those with more gambling spirit than I have. I’m not predicting that Nixon wins the Florida Senate seat. What am I expecting, though, is that based on everything now knowable, in October, this race will be seen as competitive, and should not be totally written off by the media or partisans of either candidate.

Comments? Criticism? Contact Joe Rothstein at jrothstein@rothstein.net

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