Angie Nixon, the anti-Israel dues-paying Democratic Socialist and owner of Jacksonville’s black power-themed Cafe Resistance bookstore, lost her longshot Senate bid to incumbent Sen. Ashley Moody (R., Fla.) on Tuesday.
Moody led Nixon by 2.5 points when the Associated Press called the race Tuesday evening. Nixon, who made a name for herself in 2023 when she took a lonely stand against Israel in the Florida legislature one month after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, shocked the political world in August when she defeated establishment Democrat Alex Vindman in one of the most stunning primary upsets of the 2026 elections. Nixon racked up endorsements from anti-Israel groups including Emgage Action as well as from prominent Democrats including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I, Vt.), and former president Barack Obama, but they weren't enough to push her over the finish line with Florida's increasingly conservative electorate.
Nixon's decision to join the Democratic Socialists of America in June, about two months before her shock primary upset victory, haunted her throughout her general election campaign as predicted by Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried, who warned Nixon in a heated post-primary conversation that her socialist ties would open her up to GOP attacks.
Nixon's attempts to distance herself from the DSA's far-left agenda landed flat amid the avalanche of GOP ads attacking her for her socialist ties. Nixon said in August she isn't really a socialist and only joined the organization to tap into its grassroots network. Later, in October, Nixon told CNN she didn't support the DSA's efforts to abolish prisons and defund the police because she wanted to see Moody "locked up and punished in jail."
Nixon's defeat Tuesday comes as legal trouble brews at her Cafe Resistance bookstore in Jacksonville, which features a shrine to black power militants, including several convicted of murdering police officers. Nixon's former charity, the Moxie Group, raised $270,000 in 2024 ostensibly to support her café-bookstore, but the charity never reported to the IRS what it did with the funds despite the reporting deadline expiring nearly a year ago.
The Florida Department of Agriculture, which regulates charities in the state, launched an investigation in September into whether Nixon's charity raised charitable funds throughout 2026 with an expired solicitation license. And in October, a conservative watchdog group filed a complaint with six federal and state agencies alleging Nixon violated federal wire fraud laws through her charity's fundraising solicitations.
Amid those developments, Nixon claimed she can't be held accountable for any laws her charity may have violated because she secretly resigned from the nonprofit nearly a year ago, just before the charity secretly disbanded itself, moves that weren't reported to state authorities until October.
