Republican Ashley Moody won election Tuesday to the U.S. Senate representing Florida, defeating Democrat Angie Nixon as Americans wait to learn if Republicans will maintain their hold on Congress in midterms.
Moody took the seat when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tapped her to succeed Marco Rubio when he became U.S. secretary of state in 2025.
A former state attorney general, Moody will serve the last two years of the term Rubio won in 2022.
Nixon, a state lawmaker, is a democratic socialist who tested the strength of Democrats’ left flank in a state where the party has not won a U.S. Senate seat since 2012.
Nixon upset establishment Democrats’ more moderate favorite in the primary. Her general election loss is unlikely to help heal the struggling state party’s internal rift.
The Associated Press declared Moody the winner at 8:34 p.m. EST.
Once the nation’s most evenly divided swing state, Florida has shifted steadily to the right in the last quarter century. At the time of the 2000 presidential election, Democrats had held a voter registration advantage over Republicans for decades.
That advantage would erode until 2021 when registered Republicans overtook registered Democrats. Today, there are 1.5 million more Republicans in Florida than Democrats.
Nixon received 56% of the August primary vote against retired Army Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, who received about 44%. Vindman, a former National Security Council staff member, was a key witness in Trump’s first impeachment in 2019. His brother, Eugene, was elected to Congress from Virginia’s 7th District in 2024.
