Vice President JD Vance told Florida Senate hopeful Angie Nixon she doesn't belong in America for calling herself a socialist, and the Democrat answered that the jab was disrespectful.
At a Thursday rally in Lakeland, Florida, Vance urged voters to back Republican U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody and turned his fire on the Democratic challenger by name.
He cast Nixon as a self-described socialist and said those politics have no home in this country, a line that put the Florida Senate race, socialist branding, and Nixon’s own record squarely on the table.
CBS News Miami aired her reply on Facing South Florida, where she told Jim DeFede the comments were “very disrespectful.”
"It’s really disheartening, especially knowing that I come from folks who helped build this country."
Nixon said her grandparents were sharecroppers in southern Georgia and framed her agenda as basic access to health care, fully funded public schools, and housing. She said none of that is radical or extreme.
She also rejected the socialist label outright.
"And I don’t consider myself a socialist, I consider myself a lifelong Democrat who puts people over party, people over politics, and people over profit."
Vance did not hedge. He told the Lakeland crowd Florida Democrats had offered voters a clear choice and held up Nixon as the example.
He called her the “self-described Socialist,” said it was almost too easy to mock the branding, and delivered the line that drove the fight.
"Well, ladies and gentlemen, when Angie Nixon calls herself a socialist, I think the right response is to say, `Then get the h*** out of here. You don’t belong in America if those are your views.’"
That is the core dispute. Vance treated open socialist branding as disqualifying. Nixon answered with biography, party loyalty, and a softer label.
Nixon did not deny joining the Democratic Socialists of America during the primary. She said she also joined the Working Families Party and became a lifelong NAACP member because those groups, in her words, fight to put power in the hands of the people.
She said they push Medicare for all and universal childcare and argue government should work for people, not against them. Then she tried to draw a boundary.
"And I think it’s really important to know that I don’t believe in everything the DSA believes in."
She pointed to one flashpoint herself: the group’s stated desire to abolish prisons. Nixon said she does not share that goal.
Her reason was not a law-and-order speech. She said she does not want to abolish prisons because she wants Ashley Moody “in one of them.”
Nixon went further on Moody, who previously served as Florida’s attorney general before Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed her to the U.S. Senate in 2025.
While Moody was attorney general, her office approved directing $10 million from a Medicaid settlement to the Hope Florida Foundation. Nixon now claims Moody “stole $10 million from sick kids” and diverted it to two political PACs.
"How many children are going to die because of what she did?"
She called the episode “absolutely shameful.”
A Leon County grand jury later concluded the money was misappropriated through what it called “a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities.” The same grand jury also said there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally.
No charges are described as filed. Nixon’s theft accusation remains her campaign claim. The grand jury’s no-charge finding remains the official endpoint in the available record.
Nixon said Moody will not debate her. She argued Moody knows the Hope Florida money will come up and claimed the senator has “no platform to stand on.”
She added that everything Moody has done has been “cruel.” Moody’s own response is not included in the CBS Miami account.
Vance’s rally message was simpler: back Moody in the November election and reject socialist politics as un-American. Nixon’s television reply mixed personal history, partial distance from the DSA, and a hard personal attack on her Republican opponent.
Florida voters can weigh the biography, the DSA membership, the grand jury’s limits, and the rhetoric, and decide whose definition of belonging matches the state they actually live in.
