RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Immediately after her shocking upset in Florida 's Democratic Senate primary, state Rep. Angie Nixon made clear she isn't really a socialist — even though she'd just joined the Democratic Socialists of America.
Why it matters: Nixon's win is being cast as a DSA victory , but the organization neither endorsed her nor saw it coming. She ran as a big-tent leftist, linking progressive movements and party institutions in unlikely alliances.
"I don't campaign as a member of any organization," she told Axios, echoing comments she made to MSNOW and CBS. "I don't believe in labels."
Nixon said she joined the DSA because she supports its fights over housing, public education, corporate power and — above all — Medicare for All .
The latest: Since winning, Nixon has moved fast to separate herself from DSA orthodoxy.
"No," she laughed, when asked if she's a socialist. "I own a business." (It's a bookstore called Cafe Resistance .)
"No," she doesn't back abolishing all prisons — just for-profit ones. Nor does she support "defunding" police or having so-called "open borders."
"No," she said, "I do not celebrate [Fidel] Castro" — and she disagreed with the national DSA's controversial commemoration of the late Cuban dictator.
"Yes," she will campaign with progressives and moderates, including David Jolly, the ex-Republican now running as the Democratic nominee for governor.
The big picture: Socialism is gaining with the Democratic base and younger voters. But in Florida, it's been seen as general election poison .
There's particularly strong antipathy in South Florida's sizable Cuban, Venezuelan, Colombian and Nicaraguan communities that equate socialism with oppression and violence.
Pro-Israel Jewish voters tend to oppose the DSA because of its opposition to Israel's treatment of Palestinians, a cause Nixon embraces. (She calls Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a war criminal.)
The intrigue: In early July, some DSA activists questioned Nixon's socialist purity when she sought an endorsement from the group.
In screenshots first reported by Politico , a Miami organizer called her "good on Palestine" and close to unions and movement groups, but "not a socialist or DSA member."
Besides, the organizer wrote, Nixon "will probably lose," and endorsing her "advances the narrative that DSA can't win in swing states."
National DSA leaders were blindsided by Nixon's win.
The miss exposes a potential blind spot in an organization that routinely faults Democratic leaders for losing touch with the grassroots.
The national DSA declined to comment, and the Miami activist didn't respond to a request for one.
Catch up quick: Nixon's double-digit victory was the biggest upset in modern Florida Democratic politics.
Democrat Alex Vindman outraised her nearly 17-to-1, and she won without endorsements from the DSA, Sen. Bernie Sanders or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Sanders backed her two days after the primary.
But she had an organizing base built over nearly two decades in politics and local activism and a campaign that put its limited money into organizers in overlooked communities.
The backstory: Nixon is both a movement progressive and a Democrat's Democrat, a homegrown Floridian who's worked nearly every level of the party.
In 2016, she was Sanders' African American outreach deputy field director.
Four years later, she unseated an anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ Democrat in Florida's state House with a record of defeating challengers. Nixon won by 20 points with backing from progressives, unions, even the local chamber's political arm.
She's organized unions and worked on city, state and federal campaigns. She served in the local party and ran organizing operations for Florida's Democratic Party.
Yet she remains embedded in movements pushing Democrats left. Her bookstore doubles as an activist hub: one group held its monthly meeting there days after her win.
Between the lines: Nixon became the Florida Legislature's most visible left-wing Democrat — and one of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' most dogged antagonists.
In 2022, she led a sit-in against his congressional map. When Republicans cut the House cameras, Nixon livestreamed the confrontation.
This year, she disrupted another redistricting vote with a pink bullhorn, then was arrested during a sit-in outside DeSantis' office.
State Sen. Tracie Davis says Democrats in Tallahassee had been "walking in a daze." Nixon, she says, "woke people up."
Flashback: After a racist gunman killed three Black people in her Jacksonville district, a widely shared photo showed Nixon, arms akimbo, in a "Stand with Black Women" T-shirt, glaring at DeSantis.
Months later, she introduced a Gaza ceasefire resolution the Florida House rejected 104-2.
By the numbers: Nixon's voting rights fights gained urgency after the Supreme Court curtailed the Voting Rights Act.
An Axios analysis of precinct data found Nixon's support rose the younger and more heavily Black a precinct was, echoing the coalition assembled by the state's last progressive firebrand, Andrew Gillum, in 2018.
In the governor's primary, Jolly's support ran the opposite way, rising as precincts became whiter and older.
Their contrasting bases could be complementary, if the campaigns can unite.
Jolly has repeatedly said he likes Nixon but he rejects socialism and the DSA.
Yes, but: In every election, Florida Democrats — no matter how moderate — get pegged as socialists.
Nixon's challenge: keep a broad coalition from being flattened into a label she rejects.
The other side: The National Republican Senatorial Committee says Nixon is a socialist and she can't run away from it.
"Socialism has no place in the Sunshine State and Floridians will reject socialist Nixon in November," NRSC spokesman Nick Puglia said.
What's next: Nixon now faces Republican Sen. Ashley Moody — appointed to Marco Rubio's seat when he became President Trump's secretary of state — in a race forecasters rate as a...
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