Bernie Sanders draws thousands in the Tampa rain for Angie Nixon's upstart Florida Senate run

Rain fell all afternoon in Tampa on Saturday, but more than 2,000 people in ponchos and pink campaign shirts packed the courtyard of the historic Cuban Club in Ybor City anyway. They came to see Sen. Bernie Sanders campaign for Angie Nixon, the Democrat trying to unseat Republican Sen. Ashley Moody in the Nov. 3 election.

Sanders seldom campaigns in Florida, a state that gave him a cool reception in his 2016 and 2020 presidential runs and has grown far more Republican since. He looked out at the soaked crowd and joked that he had been told Florida was a red state.

An upset winner who once worked for Sanders

Nixon, a former state representative from Jacksonville, stunned the Florida political world in August when she won the Democratic primary over Alex Vindman, a far better funded candidate backed by much of the party establishment. She once served as deputy field director for national Black outreach on Sanders's 2016 campaign. She said he called her right after her primary win to ask how he could help. Her answer was simple: come down, raise money and help her win.

Sanders told the crowd her race stood out among the hundreds he has watched this year. He noted that she was outspent 15 to 1 with no establishment support and still built a grassroots movement of working people. People doubted she could win the primary, he said. He told them they are just as wrong to doubt she can win in November.

"Call me radical"

Nixon danced onstage to warm up the crowd before she introduced her former boss. She said Floridians everywhere tell her they are tired of corruption and of working harder for less. She described $100 grocery runs that fill only two bags, power bills that keep climbing and rents and insurance premiums that rise while paychecks stay flat. She promised to fight for living wages and affordable health care.

Moody, the state's former attorney general, was appointed to the seat last year by Gov. Ron DeSantis after Marco Rubio left to become secretary of state. At a South Florida event on Friday she called Nixon a card-carrying socialist and warned that she would be the most extreme senator ever to serve. Nixon, who joined the Democratic Socialists of America in June, answered that line on Saturday. If believing a mother with two jobs should be able to feed her family is radical, she said, then call her radical. She also criticized Moody for refusing to debate her.

Young voters in the rain

Many in the crowd were in their 20s. Tyler French, 27, drove in from Pasco County and said his generation feels poorer than any before it and wants to afford a home and health care. Anais Garcia Velez, 27, who grew up in Puerto Rico, said she came to hear Nixon on protecting the state's environment and keeping data centers out of Florida. A University of South Florida student said Nixon is one of the few candidates talking about issues that matter to young people.

A long shot in a red state

Republicans remain favored in Florida, where registered Republicans now outnumber Democrats by about 1.5 million and the GOP carried the state by 13 points in 2024. Some recent polls have shown closer races than expected for Senate and governor. The last Democrat to run statewide in Florida on an openly progressive platform was Andrew Gillum, who narrowly lost the 2018 governor's race.

Sanders and Nixon also planned a stop in Melbourne on Saturday. On Sunday they head to Gainesville and Tallahassee to recruit college students as volunteers and voters before in-person early voting opens in some Florida counties on Monday.