Are Florida Democrats at a crossroads after Nixon’s run?

JACKSONVILLE — After losing Tuesday's election to Republican Sen. Ashley Moody , Democrat Angie Nixon was still entirely in campaign mode.

"We may have lost this battle, but the war is not over, and I need y'all to stay in this fight," Nixon told a packed crowd decked out in pink in a Jacksonville warehouse. "2028 is around the corner, so Ashley Moody, you better get it right cause we're coming for you."

Her final words to the room: "Let's go win, y'all!" Then Nixon started dancing.

The disappointment before she had taken the stage was palpable: Supporters had been calling voters up until the final moments before polls closed, still hoping to eke out a long-shot win against the Florida Republican Party's machine.

But Nixon — who mobilized long-ignored voters and drew thousands to rallies — turned the energy around, all but promising another run for the U.S. Senate in two years when Moody is back on the ballot. It wasn't long before she had the room chanting "2028."

Supporters say Nixon modeled how an unapologetic progressive candidate can drive out voters in Florida, and Democrats across the ideological spectrum agree that her candidacy was a tide that raised other Democrats.

Her race was "a mandate from the people in the state of Florida showing that they're long overdue for the leadership from the people that are true progressives and care about the people," said Gainesville activist and Nixon supporter Chanae Jackson.

But after Democrats failed to win any statewide races Tuesday, the party remains at a crossroads about its future — and the extent to which it will embrace Nixon as its new center.

Nixon was underestimated by her own party and Florida Republicans from the very first day of her Senate campaign.

The back-bench state lawmaker had never run for statewide office and represented the left-most wing of a party that carried little power against Florida's Republican supermajority in the state Legislature.

She was largely overlooked when she announced her Senate run in January, and raised less than $1 million in the six months that followed.

"I'm a community organizer and community organizers don't oftentimes — especially in the state of Florida — actually win elections," she said at the beginning of this year.

Nixon shocked Florida's political establishment when she won her primary in August despite "favoritism," as she described it to the Times/Herald over the summer, for her opponent from the Democratic Party.

She's now maybe the best-known Florida Democrat in the country, with progressive-left campaign priorities like Medicare for All and universal childcare.

Her candidacy marked a sharp departure from recent centrist statewide Democratic candidates intended to appeal to Republicans in a state where Democrats have a massive voter registration disadvantage.

After the turnout successes of her campaign, some of her closest supporters are calling for a reckoning within the party that prioritizes the leadership of progressive Black women like Nixon.

"There's a lot of anti-Blackness in the Democratic Party," Jackson, the Gainesville supporter, said Tuesday. "They can no longer continue to have our labor and then not accept our leadership."

Florida Democratic Party chairwoman Nikki Fried — a moderate Democrat who has clashed with Nixon at various points — said Tuesday that she has no plans to leave her leadership post anytime soon as she, too, looks ahead to the next election.

"Nope, not on the table," she said Tuesday afternoon, when asked about the possibility of new leadership. "My term ends in 2028."

But she and Democrats across the ideological spectrum agree that Nixon's presence on Tuesday's ballot was a rising tide that lifted other Democratic candidates.

"What Angie's been able to do is energize the base, give a compelling argument of why vote Dem this cycle, and we've seen a lot more lower-propensity voters turning out in this midterm," Fried said.

Nixon still had her skeptics in the party, even as it was near universally recognized that she drove more voters to the polls.

"Angie Nixon's campaigns have certainly energized a large segment of Democrats," Miami-Dade Democratic Chairwoman Laura Kelley said last week. "There is a positive, and at the same time there are people who legitimately think she may be too extreme."

Republicans had spent most of the campaign framing Nixon as a "radical" threat to the country because of her recent decision to join the Democratic Socialists of America among other minor parties this summer. But she beat Moody in Miami-Dade, home to scores of voters who fled socialist governments, and did just as well as centrist Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Jolly.

"A lot of Democrats who were panicking about Angie Nixon on the ballot on primary night are instead gonna be thanking their lucky stars that she ended up being the candidate," Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi said ahead of the election.

While Nixon lost Tuesday, she came within three points of Moody — after getting little investment from national Democratic funding groups, compared to the tens of millions poured into winning Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico.

Some supporters point to the fact that she was in striking distance at all as evidence that real investment from the party, and belief a candidate like Nixon could have won, could have made a difference.

"Her loss is 100% on the national and state parties. If she'd had even a modicum of support, she could have won," former Miami-Dade County Democratic Party Chairman Robert Dempster said Tuesday night.

Nixon herself agreed to reporters Tuesday night that more investment might have made a difference in her race, but she focused her sights ahead: "At the end of the day, it's OK."

Since Moody is fulfilling Secretary of State Marco Rubio's term, she needs to run for reelection for a full term in 2028. For Nixon, the campaign's already begun.

"I'm looking forward to registering voters these next two years," she said. What she hopes people take away from Tuesday as 2028 looms is that, "Florida is not a lost cause, and I think we proved that tonight."