Seven months after Angie Nixon kicked off her winning campaign for the Democratic Party nomination with a block party off Soutel Drive in Jacksonville, she returned Aug. 26 to the same spot for the first campaign event in her general election contest against U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody.
Taking the stage next to Cafe Resistance, the book store and coffee shop she owns, Nixon said Moody has done nothing in response to rising household costs and "allowed $10 million to be stolen" from Medicaid settlement money in order to pay for political campaigns against amendments on the 2024 ballot.
"At this point, if Ashley Moody had any other job like the rest of us, she would have been what?" Nixon asked the crowd in a parking lot
"Fired," they shouted back.
In
the week since Nixon's upset win for the Democratic Party nomination, Moody has zeroed in on Nixon joining the Democratic Socialists of America by calling her a socialist who is trying to "light this country on fire from the inside." and "wants the United States of America to look like Cuba."
Sen. Rick Scott and Gov. Ron DeSantis have called Nixon a socialist. Scott said she is a "radical Democrat Socialist" who doesn't represent Florida's values.
Nixon, who has been a state House member since 2020, is running on Medicare for All, universal childcare and fully funding public schools. She supports a $25 an hour minimum wage.
She said she expects Moody's campaign will try to stoke opposition by planting "seeds of division with scary words and labels."
Nixon said when it comes to economic issues, Florida voters want a senator intent on fighting for affordability and accountability on issues ranging from President Donald Trump's tariffs to health care and funding for public education.
"What has Ashley actually done for you?" Nixon said. "What has she done for you lately. Has Ashley held big corporations accountable for the Trump tariff refunds and price gouging us to make record profits? Has Ashley protected Medicaid and stopped insurance companies from jacking up our rates? Has she done anything about our teacher shortage?"
Nixon said instead of getting politicians "out of our private health care decisions," Moody hurt health care by letting an effort move forward that shifted $10 million from a state Medicaid settlementinto political campaigns.
"She stole $10 million from medically needy kids in order to defeat two citizen-led ballot initiatives that would have allowed you all to have healthier lives," Nixon said in reference to proposed constitutional amendments for legalizing recreational marijuana and rolling back state restrictions on abortion access.
Three victims of Dollar General store shooting remembered
Before the campaign event, Nixon attended a nearby candlelight memorial marking three years since a white gunman from Clay County carried out a racist shooting on Aug. 26, 2023 of three Black people at a Dollar General storeoff King Road near Edward Waters University.
That memorial ceremony a few miles from Cafe Resistance remembered Angela Carr, 52, who was killed she sat in a car in the store's parking lot; Anolt Joseph "A.J." Laguerre Jr., 19, a store employee working his Saturday shift, and Jerrald Gallion, 29, a customer who happened to be walking into the store. The gunman then shot himself.
"Three years ago, a white supremacist came from Clay County who was emboldened by the hateful, harmful rhetoric of Ron DeSantis," Nixon said at the campaign event.
After she called out the names of the three people who were killed and the crowd repeated each in turn, Nixon said as the United States marks its 250th anniversary, "We have the opportunity to do something different. We have the opportunity to build a new vision."
"We need you all to knock on doors for the campaign and make calls for this campaign so that we can reach every single corner of the state and we've got 67 counties to go," Nixon said. "We the people truly have the power to create the future we know we deserve and when the people of the great state of Florida finally fire Ashley for failing to do her job, she can keep calling me everything but a child of God. But I know come November, she will call me senator."
Immediately after her speech, her campaign team invited attendees to head into the bookstore where a phone bank was waiting for them to start make calls.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Angie Nixon says Ashley Moody enabled 'stealing' money from Medicaid
