Ashley Moody wins Florida Senate special election over Angie Nixon

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rallied for Nixon in central Florida

Republican Ashley Moody won Florida’s special election for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, defeating Democrat Angie Nixon, who is aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, The Guardian reported. It was the first election win for Moody, who held the seat by appointment from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in January 2025, when Marco Rubio became U.S. secretary of state. She will serve the remainder of Rubio’s term until the 2028 election.

Polling in the run-up to Tuesday gave Moody a clear but narrow advantage, which Nixon sought to close and overcome with support from Democratic figures including Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, according to The Guardian. The Guardian described the contest as a gauge of whether Florida remained reliably Republican after the party built a 1.5 million-voter advantage in registrations, or whether Democrats, shut out in statewide races for a decade, had made progress toward restoring Florida’s lost status as a key battleground.

Moody, during campaign appearances, focused on denouncing Nixon as a “socialist,” The Guardian reported. She portrayed Nixon’s alignment with the Democratic Socialists of America as evidence that her opponent was intent on defunding the police and the U.S. military, abolishing prisons, and supporting unchecked immigration and noncitizen voting.

Moody lauded Trump’s immigration policies but, mindful of the president’s strong disapproval ratings over the Iran war and high gas prices, largely refrained from praising him personally, The Guardian reported.

The Guardian reported that Nixon campaigned vigorously on affordability and corruption in politics, frequently referring to Moody’s role as Florida’s attorney general in the so-called Hope Florida scandal, in which DeSantis’s administration diverted a $10m Medicaid payout to political committees.

In an interview that provided one of her campaign’s most viral moments, Nixon said: “I don’t want to abolish prisons, because I want Ashley Moody in one of them.”

Nixon also campaigned with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who rallied for her last month in central Florida, an immigrant-heavy section of the state where the Trump administration’s harsh detention and deportation policies have proved unpopular, The Guardian reported.

The Florida race was among the Senate contests decided in the 2026 US midterms. Moody’s victory keeps the seat with the Republicans through the 2028 election and does not end the run in which Democrats have not won a statewide race in Florida for a decade. The Guardian framed the contest as a gauge of Florida’s partisan alignment, and one statewide result does not settle where the state sits in the wider 2026 midterms.