U.S. Senate candidate Angie Nixon made multiple stops in Broward and Miami-Dade counties on Sunday, looking for late-campaign support at churches, early voting sites and a rain-soaked Souls to the Polls event.
The day also brought her face-to-face, briefly, with U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Broward’s most prominent Jewish elected official.
The two Democrats embraced — a notable interaction because Nixon has had difficulties attracting support from some Jewish voters and community leaders, largely because of the view she shares with many in the party’s progressive wing that Israel has committed genocide in the war with Gaza.
The day’s heavy rain helped bring them together under tents at a park next to the early voting site at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center in Fort Lauderdale.
Though this was the first public encounter, with pictures, Nixon said she and Wasserman Schultz have spoken during the course of the campaign.
Their meeting was at what normally would be a rally sponsored by the NAACP that follows the traditional Souls to the Polls march down Sistrunk Boulevard, the historic main street of the Black community in Fort Lauderdale.
Part of the parking lot at the early voting site and neighboring park was flooded, but Nixon professed enthusiasm. “It’s a nice bunch of cars over there,” which she said was a sign that people were still coming to vote.
“If people get discouraged from voting today because of the rain, they need to make sure that they figure out their polling location,” Nixon said, adding that would be a focus of her campaign on Monday.
Her arrival generated buzz and requests for selfies from many of the 50 people under another set of tents, where members of several of the Divine Nine historically Black fraternities and sororities served food, and another 50 at the second set of tents.
Nixon’s closing pitch, in a brief interview, was that “Washington has lost its way, and in order for us to pull it back on the right track, in order for us to allow government to work for people, they’ve got to vote for me,” she said. “If not they’re just gonna allow the billionaires to make more money off of us while we continue to work harder than them.”
Souls to the Polls events have become a tradition since Florida authorized in-person early voting in the early 2000s. They started with clergy at Black churches urging parishioners to leave services and head directly to the nearest early voting sites.
Nixon said it’s essential to encourage African American and Caribbean American voters to show up. “It’s very important,” she said. “I mean, we’re being targeted and there’s an attack on DEI and really it’s an attack on blackness and Black people.
“And so it’s going to be important for them to turn out, but it’s important for everyone to turn out. We’re all getting screwed. Unless you’re ultra, ultra, ultra rich and wealthy, then you are one or two paychecks away from losing it all because you’re getting too behind,” Nixon said.
Ashley Moody, the appointed Republican senator running to retain the seat, has focused much of her campaign portraying Nixon as far to the left of Florida voters.
On Saturday, at a rally in The Villages in Central Florida, Moody told Republicans that her opponent was getting unsavory campaign help from out-of-state. “The commies are coming,” Moody said. “There is an actual communist on the ballot.”
And Moody repeated her claim that when Nixon “is given a microphone, she likes to quote the ‘Communist Manifesto.’”
And, last week, Moody said Democrats are like termites.
“First of all, I ain’t never read a communist manifesto, as a matter of fact. Let’s be clear. But all she can do is make up stuff and lies because she has a failed record,” Nixon said.
U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody walks to the stage during a campaign stop in The Villages on Saturday, October 31, 2026. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel)
She said Moody, a two-term state attorney general before Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed her to fill a Senate vacancy, bears responsibility for Florida becoming “the least affordable state to live in,” and failed to hold insurance companies accountable for not paying claims when people suffer losses.
“Ashley Moody is a horrible elected official, horrible, horrible, and we can change that when folks go vote for me,” Nixon said.
The average of public opinion polls, posted Sunday by FiftyPlusOne, shows Moody ahead of Nixon by six percentage points. On Thursday, the highly respected Cook Political Report moved its assessment of the contest slightly in the direction of Nixon, to “likely Republican” from “solid Republican.”
Nixon started her day at a Colombian restaurant in Doral.
She remained on Sistrunk Boulevard for an unpublicized, late lunch, at Smith’s restaurant.
She ordered lemon pepper wings, dry. Before she headed to her late afternoon and evening stops she paused to pray with Fort Lauderdale City Commissioner Pamela Beasley-Pittman.
U.S. Rep Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. left, U.S. Senate candidate Angie Nixon and community activist Henrietta Davis, right, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026 in Fort Lauderdale at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center at a Souls to the Polls pre-election event. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Wet march, but optimism
The traditional pre-election Souls to the Polls march down Sistrunk Boulevard from New Hope Missionary Baptist Church to the African American library usually draws dozens of candidates and hundreds of marchers.
On Sunday, there were fewer than two dozen.
Chris Smith, a former Democratic leader of the Florida House and Florida Senate who organizes the marches, said it was essential to carry on despite the rain, which held down turnout.
“It’s important to show that even the rain doesn’t stop us. To walk a mile and half in the rain shows it is important to our community to get the vote out.”
Longtime community activist Henrietta Davis said it was essential to march. “This is very much important to me. It’s time for a change. This is something I do every (election) year but this time it hit different, totally different. There is just so much at stake right now.”
She said she wasn’t going to be deterred by the rain; when she went to bed Saturday night, Davis said, “Souls to the Polls was on my mind.”
Though Souls to the Polls events are usually billed as nonpartisan, they’re aimed at turning out Democratic voters.
Davis said she supports both Nixon and David Jolly, the Democratic candidate for governor even though the Republican nominee, Byron Donalds, would be the state’s first Black governor. She said some, but not many, Black voters would vote for Donalds. She said what candidates “offer the people,” not their race, is most important.
Wasserman Schultz is running in a newly crafted congressional district that includes the Sistrunk community. Even when she didn’t represent the area, she’s been a Souls participant for years.
Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, march in a rainstorm down Sistrunk Boulevard, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Fort Lauderdale. The Souls to the Polls event takes place on the last Sunday before elections. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
She said it reminds all voters that they need to turn out on Tuesday if they haven’t voted early or by mail. “Souls to the Polls Sunday is not just about the Black community. It is about the whole community,” Wasserman Schultz said.
Smith, who left elected office in 2016 and now practices law and operates Smitty’s Wings Sistrunk, a restaurant he founded six years ago with his late wife, said he senses lots of interest in voting this year.
“People are just really excited to vote,” he said. Eyeing the rain, he said he went to buy a new tent at Walmart on Sunday morning. The cashier asked if he was getting it “for the vote stuff” and proudly informed Smith she had already voted.
Political writer Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.