"Unbought & Unbossed": Angie Nixon on Winning Democratic Senate Race in Florida, DSA Membership & More

Progressive state Representative Angie Nixon pulled off a stunning victory in Florida last week, defeating the establishment-backed centrist candidate Alexander Vindman to win the state’s Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Vindman, a former Army intelligence officer who testified during Trump’s first impeachment trial, raised more than 16 times as much campaign money as Nixon. In November, Nixon will face incumbent Republican Senator Ashley Moody, who was appointed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to fill the seat of Marco Rubio when he resigned to serve as secretary of state. If elected, Nixon, who joined the Democratic Socialists of America in June, would become the only member of the DSA in the Senate. “I know what it’s like to struggle. I don’t want anyone to have to struggle the way in which I did,” says Nixon, whose campaign has focused on expanding healthcare, childcare and education, as well as tackling the affordability crisis. Transcript ANJALI KAMAT: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Anjali Kamat. We turn now to Florida, where the progressive state Representative Angie Nixon pulled off a stunning victory last week in the Democratic Senate primary. Nixon defeated Alexander Vindman, a former Army intelligence officer who testified during Trump’s first impeachment trial. Vindman was backed by the Democratic establishment, and his campaign raised more than 16 times as much cash as Nixon’s campaign. Nixon has served in the Florida House of Representatives since 2020. In 2022, she made national headlines for leading sit-ins and other protests inside the Florida Capitol to protest a Republican move to redraw congressional maps. In November, Nixon will face incumbent Republican Senator Ashley Moody, who was appointed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to fill the seat of Marco Rubio, who resigned to serve as secretary of state. If elected, Angie Nixon would become the only member of the Democratic Socialists of America in the Senate. She joined the group in June. Angie Nixon joins us now from Jacksonville. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Angie Nixon. Tell us how you defeated Alex Vindman. REP. ANGIE NIXON: Good morning. I’m so happy to be with you all today. I was able to defeat Alex Vindman because it was good old-fashioned grassroots organizing. I am a former union organizer. I’m a community organizer, and I’ve had the opportunity to travel all across the state of Florida over the past nearly two decades to build a diverse coalition of supporters and, you know, just folks who I’ve been working with over the past few years — nearly two decades, I’m sorry. We actually were able to help increase the minimum wage. I was a statewide organizer with that ballot initiative, also helping with automatic rights restoration. And so, it was just hustle. And so, I’m super excited to be the Democratic nominee, and I’m glad to be here with you all today. ANJALI KAMAT: And, Angie, you’re facing off Republican Ashley Moody in November. Florida has gone to Trump twice. This is a deep-red state. What is your strategy going to be to win in November? REP. ANGIE NIXON: My strategy is going to expand on the strategy we had during the primary: just really going to meet people where they are. Unfortunately, my opponent likes to call me names, but that’s because she doesn’t have anything to show for it. You know, folks are trying to label me right now and put me in a box, but Ashley Moody is someone who actually stole $10 million from the most medically needy kids here in the state of Florida, and they allowed her to divert that funding so that they could defeat two ballot initiatives that would have helped improve the health of Floridians across the state. And her reward for that theft was her appointment to this United States Senate seat. Not only that, but Ashley Moody is just someone who does not speak with folks. She runs away from folks. I’ve had to answer many calls and respond to many emails that she just did not return to constituents that were in need of assistance. She also voted against the ACA subsidies, which caused nearly 300,000 people here in the state of Florida to drop off the rolls, the ACA marketplace, and it caused our private insurance premiums to go up, as well. Ashley Moody is someone who cannot be trusted. She’s simply a rubber stamp for Donald Trump. She does any and everything that he says to do, and it’s just ridiculous. We need to send people to Washington, D.C., who are going to stand up and push back against Donald Trump, people who are actually going to work hard to ensure they are lowering the costs and ending the corruption and the chaos that’s in D.C. ANJALI KAMAT: And, Angie Nixon, you ran on an affordability platform. Talk about your policy priorities if you do win the election in November. What is the message you’ll be taking to the Senate? REP. ANGIE NIXON: So, when I win — because I like to speak things into existence — on day one, I’m going to file legislation to reextend the ACA subsidies. Folks are going bankrupt simply because they are trying to stay alive. Medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy, and that’s absolutely absurd. And then we’re going to also push hardcore for universal healthcare. A recent Yale study came out that showed that the government would save $1 trillion if we pass universal healthcare. Also, it’s going to be really important for us to address this housing issue. Right now here in the state of Florida, people who rent, they’re paying over 18% the national average. People who have property insurance and they are homeowners, they are paying 300 times more than folks in other states. And that just totally has to change. The reason they’re paying all this money is because Ashley Moody took a lot of money from insurance companies. She didn’t rein them in when she was the attorney general. And so, they just — you know, they help her out by contributing to her campaign coffers. And so, I’m happy to let folks know that the only people that I’m beholden to are hardworking, everyday folks. I am someone who prides myself on being unbought and unbossed. Also, I am a mother of five. Me and my husband have a blended family. I was a single mom for 12 years, and I understand how tough it is as it relates to childcare, right? I have a 5-year-old right now. And some parents are paying $800 to $2,400 a month simply to try to send their children to a childcare facility. And so, I support universal childcare. I know that for every dollar we put into childcare, we get $3 back in the economy, because that allows parents to be able to work. That also allows our children to be diverted from the school-to-prison pipeline, which, you know, these for-profit prisons, these elected officials, these billionaires, they want our children to have an ill education, a ridiculous, a horrible education, right? Which is why they’re defunding public schools, because they want to usher them into the school-to-prison pipeline. Why? Why make sure that our children have a good-quality education, when they know they’ll make more money off of them going to prison, and exploiting their labor? And so, these are some of the things that I’m really pushing for and want to see accomplished when I become the next United States senator. I know there’s a rumor going around saying that I want to abolish prisons. I don’t. I want to abolish for-profit prisons. There’s also a rumor going around saying that I want to defund the police. I don’t want to defund the police. I want to defund Flock cameras, so that bad cops don’t have the ability to stalk their ex-girlfriends or their ex-boyfriends. I want to make sure that we have a justice system that works for everyone, not just for the billionaires and co-conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein, who actually are treated more fairly than a single mom who got caught stealing formula to make sure that her child had food. And so, these are things that need to really be worked on. We need to make sure that hardworking, everyday people get to shape what their communities look like and what their economies look like. And that’s my — that’s my mantra. That’s my motto. And that’s what I’m fighting for each and every day. ANJALI KAMAT: Angie Nixon, in May, you took part at a sit-in in Governor Ron DeSantis’s office in protest of the redistricting bill, where you were arrested and now face a jury trial on trespassing charges in September. Talk about redistricting and how that affects what — the elections in November. REP. ANGIE NIXON: I mean, Donald Trump basically went to a lot of Republican governors and asked them to rig elections for him in the form of redrawing maps. And so, we know that this was a partisan gerrymander, because Ron DeSantis decided to release the maps to Fox News, and he did it when it was color-coded, and it showed and illustrated where blue seats, Democratic seats, would possibly be converted to Republican seats. And so, that goes against our state Constitution, and they illegally and unconstitutionally passed this bill. And so, I decided to stand up for democracy and actually disrupt the proceedings, because, again, what they were doing was illegal and unconstitutional, and it went against what the voters wanted. I believe — I know that the people should decide who their representatives are, right? The politicians should not be able to choose who their voters are. And what we’re witnessing right now, in conjunction with the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, is Republican lawmakers in D.C. and all over these state legislatures, they are trying to return us back to the worst chapters of our history. And that is simply because they don’t want us to have a say. They want the status quo. And I’m telling and making an appeal to everyone, right? Like, right now these politicians are working less and less and less, and meanwhile, they’re getting richer. We are working harder than ever, and many of us are still struggling to stay afloat. They want us feeling hopeless. They want us to feel as though nothing can change, as though voting won’t matter. But they’re spending billions and billions of dollars — right? — to suppress our right to vote. They’re changing laws, making it harder for marginalized communities, for working families to go out and vote. And this is because they want to stay in power. They are so fearful of losing power, and they are fearful that we are going — many people are going to come into power, and they think that we’re going to do to them what they’ve done to many of us for hundreds of years. But that’s not the case. What happens when working families come into power, when everyday, hardworking people become our state lawmakers, our federal lawmakers, we lead with love and humanity and dignity and compassion and respect. We want to make sure that no one experiences what we experienced as marginalized people. Again, I was a single mom, and I keep going back to this. I was a single mom for 12 years. I know what it’s like to struggle. I don’t want anyone to have to struggle the way in which I did, right? I know what happens. I am also proof positive of what happens when government does it right. I was a recipient of a workshop, a program in which I was able to gain down payment assistance, because money trickled down from the feds, that trickled down to the state, that trickled down to the local government, that allowed me, a woman who had graduated from the University of Florida, that was working for the state but only making $28,000 — they helped me pay my down payment. They helped me with down payment assistance, as well as closing costs, right? And when I was — when I refinanced my home, I paid that back. But these are programs that Donald Trump cut under the big BS bill, programs that Ashley Moody does not want. And that’s because they just want their campaign donors and their billionaire friends and family and themselves to get richer. I am ready for hardworking, everyday people to get bailed out. I’m ready for small business owners to get bailed out. We have to focus our efforts on lowering their costs, and not these costs of these big corporations. Over 88 companies last year made over $105 billion. They paid absolutely nothing in federal taxes. Meanwhile, I had a woman tell me she made $55,000 last year, and she’s on a payment plan with the IRS. Our system is broken, and I want to go to Washington, D.C., to help fix it. ANJALI KAMAT: Angie Nixon, final question. You joined the DSA recently, in June. What is your relationship to the organization? If you win in November, you’d be the first DSA member in the Senate. REP. ANGIE NIXON: So, you are exactly right. I just recently joined the DSA. I also just recently joined the Working Families Party. And my relationship is one that I just joined them because I saw that they were one of the organizations that was working the hardest to help ensure that people have universal healthcare. I’m talking to too many people who have loved ones that have died because they were underinsured or they didn’t have any insurance. And so, I am not an active member of DSA. I just paid a little bit of dues, because — as I pay dues with the Working Families Party, because I appreciate certain parts of their platform. Do I agree with all of it? No, I don’t. And I don’t agree with everything in the Democratic Party, as well. And so, I want folks to know they don’t have to worry about me pushing some type of authoritarianism or any type of dictatorship. As a matter of fact, I have made it my life’s mission to push back on any type of authoritarian and dictatorship, which is why I am so adamant about fighting back against Donald Trump and heading to D.C. I want folks to know I am someone accessible, ethical, someone that they can trust. I’m willing to have conversations about any, any questions folks may have of me and my ideology. But if they look at my track record, they know that I always put people first, hardworking, everyday people first. And that is what I’m going to do when I become their next United States senator. ANJALI KAMAT: Thank you so much, state Representative Angie Nixon. You’re the Democratic Senate nominee for the state of Florida. Thank you for joining us. REP. ANGIE NIXON: Thank you. ANJALI KAMAT: Coming up, we’ll go to California, where Aisha Wahab has won a special election for a seat in the House, even though AIPAC spent millions to defeat her. She’s set to become the first Afghan American in Congress. Stay with us. [break] ANJALI KAMAT: “Everybody Deserves to Be Free” by the Resistance Revival Chorus. Media Options