Angie Nixon went to church in Miami-Dade on Sunday morning, then came to Broward to preach to the Democratic choir, firing up supporters before they fanned out for an afternoon of door-knocking in the Hollywood area.
Nixon, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, emphasized themes that unite the party, highlighting what she said is a need for change, and condemned U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody, the Republican appointed to the job who is running to retain the seat in the November election.
Pointing to continuing revelations emanating from the Hope Florida investigation, Nixon repeated her call for the current senator’s resignation, and said she needs to be “locked up in jail,” along with Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier.
“Ashley Moody is a thief. She stole $10 million along with (Gov.) Ron DeSantis and (Attorney General) James Uthmeier. They stole $10 million from low-income and medically needy children. How low must you be to steal money from kids? $10 million? And she has the audacity to say that she cares about law and order,” Nixon said.
A grand jury report, disclosed last week by WFOR-Ch. 4, said the money was “misappropriated” but it found “insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally,” largely because no one took responsibility or said they had any memory of who made key decisions.
Campaign themes
Nixon said her campaign provides people “the opportunity to encourage people to dream of a new vision for our country and for our state, a new vision where every family has stability, where every worker has dignity and every young person has the opportunity to reach the true American Dream. Can y’all imagine if hardworking everyday people got to shape what our community looks like and what our economies look like?”
And she said people who feel under attack deserve better. “We have to love and protect one another,” Nixon said.
“That means protecting our Jewish friends and family and community members because they are living in a state of fear right now. That also means protecting our trans and members of the LGBTQ community because they are living in a state of fear. That means standing up and protecting our Muslim friends and families as well. And Black people as well as every marginalized community. It is our duty,” she said.
The candidate’s voice sounded hoarse, something she attributed in a brief interview to her constant campaigning since her Aug. 18 primary win.
The 60 people who gathered at an office in Hollywood didn’t need convincing. Before Nixon arrived, they got brief training on the basics on making the most of door-to-door campaigning. Afterward, they got their assignments and hit the streets.
Nixon, a progressive, was a community organizer before she was elected to the state House of Representatives. Her supporters said her campaign’s organization helped her win the primary over Alex Vindman, who had much more money and support from the party establishment.
Heather Innusa, of Hollywood, a legal assistant, said she’s attended No Kings protests against Trump and Indivisible rallies in support of democracy, but has never before canvassed for a candidate.
“I feel very oppressed and stressed about the current state of our world,” she said. “I just wanted to see what I can do to support, help make it happen, help people know her.”
Looking around the room, Innusa said she was heartened by her fellow canvassers: “White people. There’s Indian people. There’s Black people. There’s Hispanic people.”
Like several others on Sunday, Ronald Benjamin, of Oakland Park, said he first learned about Nixon when he saw a video of her on social media, leading him to conclude she’s a fighter.
“I’m a clinical psychologist. I can tell if you’re faking it. She was real,” Benjamin said. “We need somebody like that. We need somebody that can speak the truth.”
Among the first to show up for the canvassing was Broward County Commissioner Beam Furr — who supported Vindman in the primary. He said he had never met Nixon before Sunday, but after looking at her more closely since she won, he said he was ready to work on her behalf.
“She’s got a lot of fight in her,” Furr said. “She’s very real, and she’s fighting for those people that need fighting for.”
Later, he urged his fellow canvassers to reach beyond Democrats to bring in no-party-affiliation independent voters. “The only way you win these elections is by building coalitions,” he said. “Pull everybody in you know… not just the like-minded people.”
Hope Florida
As she has in recent days, Nixon continued hammering Moody over the latest developments emanating from the long-running Hope Florida investigations.
WFOR-Ch. 4 last week published a leaked copy of a sealed grand jury investigation that found the DeSantis administration “misappropriated” $10 million from a settlement involving the Medicaid health program for poor children. The money went to Hope Florida, a charity championed by the governor’s wife, and ended up in political committees that opposed the 2024 referendum that would have legalized adult use of marijuana in Florida.
Moody at the time was state attorney general, the grand jury report said her office knew of the plans to divert the money. DeSantis later appointed her to fill the vacancy created when then-U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio became President Donald Trump’s secretary of state.
A supporter records state Rep. Angie Nixon, the 2026 Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Florida, speaking at a gathering of volunteers preparing to go door-to-door on her behalf in Hollywood on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026. (Anthony Man/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Last week on social media, Moody wrote that numerous reports “misrepresent the facts” surrounding the settlement. She said her office “had no knowledge of how funds would be spent” and that “attempts to characterize this any other way are disingenuous.”
Moody’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment Sunday about Nixon’s Hope Florida comments or say where she was campaigning on Sunday.
On social media, she posted a clip from a Fox News interview in which she said, “I am up against probably what would be the most extreme radical senator ever in the history of the United States in Angie Nixon. I hope folks see that we are working hard for them.”
In the most recent news release on her website, posted Saturday about a Friday Central Florida “Women for Moody meetup,” she criticized Nixon for joining the “Democrat Socialists of America, a group who fights to defund our police, defund our military, open our borders, and let noncitizens vote in our elections.”
State Rep. Angie Nixon, center, the 2026 Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Florida, poses for pictures with supporters Lauren Dressel of Davie, left, and Heather Innusa of Hollywood, right, after Nixon spoke to a group of supporters in Hollywood on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026. (Anthony Man/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Nixon has said she doesn’t support all DSA positions, but shares its push for things like universal health care.
Over the weekend, she said she talked to key constituencies in South Florida, including Cuban voters and Jewish voters — “letting folks know who I really am because there’s a lot of lies and disinformation that’s being spread about me.”
Some people have been “asking me if I’m a communist, asking me if I’m antisemitic. And I lay it out and say that no, I am not. I am someone who actually wants to put the power back in the hands of the people, and the fact remains that Ashley Moody has nothing to run on except trying to call me out my name and say a lot of lies.”
Political writer Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.