WASHINGTON — The Democratic Socialists of America scored one of their biggest wins ever in Florida’s special Democratic Senate primary Tuesday evening when state Rep. Angie Nixon upset former National Security Council official and Trump impeachment witness Alexander Vindman.
However, operatives from both parties are expecting Nixon and the DSA to get a rude awakening from Republican incumbent Ashley Moody in November.
“Florida was already a stretch,” veteran Democratic strategist Adam Bozzi told The Post Wednesday. “This makes it even more difficult, and [Nixon] is unlikely to get the national resources needed to win. That money will likely be directed to other states.”
“The good news for Democrats,” Bozzi added, “is that they’ve done an excellent job recruiting strong candidates who have won primaries in many other races like Texas [James Talarico], Ohio [Sherrod Brown], Alaska [Mary Peltola], and Iowa [Josh Turek], giving them a solid chance to win the Senate majority.”
The expectations-resetting began the day after Nixon’s win, when election handicapper Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics shifted his rating of the Florida race to “safe R” from “likely R.”
The DSA itself didn’t make Nixon’s job any easier when it commemorated what would have been the 100th birthday of Cuban Communist dictator Fidel Castro last week.
Approximately 1.6 million people of Cuban origin live in Florida, many of whom fled the Castro regime or have family members who did so.
The scale of Nixon’s achievement in becoming the first DSA member to win a Senate nomination or a nod for any statewide office can be summed up in the fundraising gap between her and Vindman.
The state lawmaker raised a paltry $975,000 to Vindman’s $16.3 million war chest. Nixon scored endorsements from “Squad” Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts — but bigger left-wing names like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) stayed out of the race.
Nixon’s success was seen as so unlikely that a potential race with Moody was barely polled. The most recent survey, taken by the University of North Florida last month, showed Moody with 50% support among likely voters compared to 42% for Nixon — making her a clear favorite fewer than three months before Election Day.
Some Republicans were almost as thrilled as the DSA themselves with Nixon’s win.
“The most gratifying loss last night was that of a real treasonous creep, Alexander Vindman, to a Radical Left Lunatic, who can’t speak or think properly, and who will go down to certain defeat at the hands of Ashley Moody, a truly Fantastic Senator,” President Trump gloated on Truth Social.
“I was stunned by that,” Ryan Elijah, the Republican nominee in Florida’s 7th Congressional District, told The Post Wednesday of Nixon’s victory. “I think that is a problem right now in the Democratic Party. They have people that are moving to that socialist side.”
“For Republicans, we just have to stay focused on what we’re doing. You know, if they’re going to continue to move to that socialist side, our ideas are going to sound a lot better to the American people,” he added. “If they keep running to that socialist side, it’s going to get a lot easier.”
National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) spokesperson Bernadette Breslin argued that Tuesday’s result was “the latest sign that Chuck Schumer has surrendered his party to radical socialists like Nixon, Abdul El-Sayed [of Michigan], and Troy Jackson [of Maine].”
“Now, Schumer and Democratic pollsters alike have lost faith in Florida.”
