Angie Nixon, a Jacksonville state representative and self-described member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), won Florida's Democratic Senate primary over retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Alex Vindman on Tuesday in an upset that stunned operatives in both parties. If she wins in November, Nixon will become the first DSA member elected to the U.S. Senate, in a state whose modern political identity was built in large part on rejecting a word she has embraced.
The win puts a democratic socialist candidate on the ballot in the state with the largest concentration of Cuban Americans in the country, a community whose politics have long been shaped by opposition to the political ideology its families fled. Days before the primary, Nixon toured Miami's Little Havana neighborhood, stopping for Cuban coffee and campaigning in the fruterias and domino parks. She will face Republican Senator Ashley Moody, who was appointed to the seat in 2025 after Marco Rubio left to become secretary of state.
Moody has already signaled where the general election fight will be fought. She co-sponsored the DEMOCRACIA Act with Florida's other GOP U.S. senator, Rick Scott, in November 2025. The legislation aimed to freeze the assets of and denying entry to Cuban officials and has accused past administrations of appeasing Havana's government.
Nixon has staked out the opposite position. She has called the U.S. embargo on Cuba "a failure" that leaves ordinary Cubans hungry and says she wants to restore the Obama administration's policy of engagement with Havana. She has paired that with explicit criticism of the Cuban government, saying "the regime does need to change" and that power should return to the Cuban people.
She has accused Moody of steering more Department of Homeland Security funding toward deporting Cubans. Cuba previews a larger fight ahead: how much the word socialism still costs Democrats in a state built in part by exiles. A University of North Florida poll taken before the primary showed Moody leading Nixon by 8 points, 46 percent to 38 percent, with 14 percent undecided.
Election forecasters at the University of Virginia's Sabato's Crystal Ball moved the race to safely Republican after Nixon's win. The county-level returns complicate the simplest version of the socialism story. Nixon carried Miami-Dade County, home to the largest concentration of Cuban Americans in the country, by nearly 20 points over Vindman, who had built his campaign in part around his family's flight from the Soviet Union.
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