Florida's Angie Nixon isn't the socialist you've heard about

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.

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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 an easy win for the GOP.

• Most public polling assumed a Moody–Vindman matchup. One exception, a mid-July University of North Florida poll, found Nixon faring better against Moody than Vindman — but trailing by 8 points.

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