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Our verdict

LiberalMind endorses Ashley Moody

Election Day is November 3. This is a special election for the last two years of Marco Rubio's Senate term. This is the whole race — the records, the platforms, the worst claims against each candidate, and what the sources actually show. Read the research, and decide.

How Florida got here

Marco Rubio left this Class 3 seat in January 2025 to become U.S. Secretary of State. Governor Ron DeSantis appointed Ashley Moody, then Florida's attorney general, and she was sworn in on January 21, 2025. The winner on November 3 serves the remainder of the term, ending January 3, 2029 — which means this seat is effectively being contested twice in two years: Moody is an appointed incumbent asking voters to elect her to it for the first time.

The roster is confirmed from the Florida Division of Elections candidate list, cross-checked against an official county sample ballot. Moody won the August 2026 Republican primary with roughly 80%. Angie Nixon won the August 18 Democratic primary with 56.1% over Alexander Vindman — the early frontrunner and top fundraiser, who is not the nominee, whatever stale coverage still says. Neil J. Gillespie qualified directly for the general-election ballot as a No Party Affiliation candidate.

The raters see a Republican seat: Cook says Solid R (Oct. 20), Sabato's Crystal Ball says Safe R (Oct. 14), Inside Elections and DDHQ say Likely R. RealClearPolling is the outlier at Lean R, and its October average had Moody at 49.3% to Nixon's 42.3% — with the most recent survey in that average, St. Pete Polls (Oct. 5–7), at 47% to 45%. The money is closer than the ratings: through mid-October FEC reports, Moody had raised $14.5 million and Nixon $11.3 million, and Nixon outraised Moody in the third quarter, $7.6 million to $5.8 million — and held more cash on hand, $3.27 million to Moody's $816,355. That is the race. Now the records.

Ashley Moody (Republican)

Her record: Moody was Florida's attorney general from 2019 to 2025, and before that a federal prosecutor and an elected Hillsborough County circuit judge (elected 2006). In the Senate she sits on Judiciary, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, HELP, and Aging. She voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill in 2025. A VoteHub analysis of her first year found her voting with her party 99% of the time and with President Trump 100% of the time.

Her record as attorney general: she joined the Texas-led lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results and supported the legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act. She declined to defend Florida's open-carry prohibition in court. Her campaign runs on economic issues, border security, and law enforcement; her campaign site named three homepage priorities — law and order, economic prosperity, American sovereignty — and had no issues page as of October 23, 2026.

The worst claim — and the record:

Claim: Her office was part of the Hope Florida money diversion. A grand jury found the DeSantis administration "misappropriated" $10 million in Medicaid-settlement funds routed through the Hope Florida Foundation to political groups. Moody was attorney general at the time, and her office approved the underlying settlement. Those facts are documented. What is also documented: no charges were filed, and the grand-jury report was later expunged by a state appellate court (reporting as of Oct. 8, 2026). Democratic candidates called for Moody's resignation over the findings; the legal system, so far, has not backed them. This is a fair question about judgment in office. It is not a conviction, and we do not write it as one.

She also declined a first debate with Nixon in September 2026 (Florida Politics, Sept. 9). An incumbent who will not debate should have to say why.

Pros: A real executive record — six years as a state attorney general, a judgeship, a prosecutor's career. A reliable conservative vote in a Senate where the majority is the whole game: confirmations, the judicial pipeline, everything downstream. Her 100% first-year alignment with the president is, for our readers, the point of the seat.

Cons: The Hope Florida settlement her office approved deserves a straighter public accounting than it has gotten. Party-line reliability cuts both ways — 99% with the party means voters are buying the party, not an independent check. No issues page and a declined debate are the habits of a campaign that thinks the seat is already hers.

The flaw, plainly: Moody's flaw is entitlement, not ideology — an appointed incumbent running as though election were a formality. It is a real flaw. It is also the kind a voter can punish later without handing the seat to the other side's program.

Angie Nixon (Democratic)

Her record: Nixon is a Florida state representative from Jacksonville, first elected in 2020, re-elected in 2022 and 2024. She was formerly executive director of Florida for All and a union organizer, and she owns Café Resistance, a bookstore and community hub in Jacksonville. In the Florida House she was reprimanded over a bullhorn protest, and she was arrested after a sit-in at the governor's office; her criminal case from the sit-in ended in September 2026 — the precise disposition rests on a single opinion-column account and we do not state it as settled fact.

Her program, in her own coalition's words: In June 2026, Nixon joined the Democratic Socialists of America. She is also a member of the Working Families Party. She rejects the "socialist" label her opponents use — but the platform is the platform, sourced from her campaign: Medicare for All, universal child care and pre-K, paid family and sick leave, a national rent freeze, tuition-free public colleges and trade schools, student-debt cancellation, and expanded public-school funding; her first bill, she says, would extend ACA subsidies. Her endorsers include Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, EMILYs List, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the Sierra Club, and the Florida AFL-CIO.

Pros: She won a primary the money said she would lose, outraised an incumbent senator in the third quarter, and built a genuine grassroots campaign in a state her party had written off. State legislators who organize their own districts know things Washington lifers forget.

Cons: Everything above, priced honestly. A national rent freeze is not a moderate position. Medicare for All and tuition-free college with debt cancellation is not a moderate program. Joining the DSA in June 2026 — as a sitting state representative, mid-campaign for a U.S. Senate seat — is not an accident of biography; it is a declaration of which movement she belongs to.

The flaw, plainly: Nixon is not a flawed moderate. She is the other side's program, stated plainly and organized competently. Under our rules there is no Manchin test to pass here — she has never broken with the movement she joined in June; she is the movement. In a Senate where one vote is the majority, her organizing vote alone would hand confirmations and the judicial pipeline to the party of the program she campaigns on.

Also on the ballot: Neil J. Gillespie, No Party Affiliation, polling around 2% where listed. Our researchers found no developed public policy program and no statement of how he would caucus if elected. We note him because a ballot should be reported whole; there is, on the present record, nothing more to evaluate.

OUR CALL

LiberalMind endorses Ashley Moody.

The reasoning is the Extremist Rule, applied as written. When one option is a candidate of the socialist-program tier — and a June 2026 DSA membership joined to a platform of Medicare for All, a national rent freeze, and debt cancellation is that tier, whatever label its owner prefers — we endorse the other candidate, noting her flaws. Moody's flaws are noted above and they are real: an appointed incumbent's entitlement, a settlement her office approved that still owes voters a fuller accounting, a debate declined. None of them is disqualifying, none of them is a program, and her Senate record is a reliable conservative vote on the things the seat actually decides. The alternative is not a moderate with flaws. It is the program itself.

For the complete Election 2026 breakdown — every race, claim by claim — see the full coverage on our website.

Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Sources

Election result — November 4, 2026

Winner: Ashley Moody (Republican) — called by the Associated Press. This result was appended on November 4, 2026 (results wave 1); the original article above is unchanged, exactly as published before Election Day.

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

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