Alex Vindman looks past Angie Nixon, says focus is turning out independents in November

Lt. Col. Alex Vindman continues to advance a General Election message even as state Rep. Angie Nixon, his opponent in next month’s Senate Primary, says she believes she can win the nomination amid frustrations about his unwillingness to debate her.

True to form, Vindman didn’t mention his intraparty opposition during remarks to St. Johns County Democrats this week, preferring instead to focus on November over August, until an audience member spoke up during his close and forced him to deviate from scripted questions to address his main Primary opponent.

“I’m laser-focused on the General Election,” Vindman said, going on to conflate Nixon’s name and Republican U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody’s before correcting himself.

“We unseat Angie Nixon, we put in another Democrat, we get control of the Senate. That’s when, yeah, when we unseat Angie — Ashley Moody, that’s when changes really occur.”

Vindman, like Val Demings and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell before him, seems to be betting on Democrats being willing to give him the nomination without intraparty face-offs, under the premise that a generic electability argument will translate into success for him. That didn’t work out well for previous nominees who didn’t debate Primary opponents though.

Polling suggests he may need more of an opportunity to introduce himself to voters in his own party.

A Change Research survey showed Vindman up over Nixon with Democrats 34% to 24%, with 41% undecided.

A survey released this week from the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab finds that Nixon takes 42% in the hypothetical General Election matchup, with Vindman commanding 40% support. And 90% of Democrats back Nixon against Moody, while Vindman only takes 86% of those in his party.

Black voters, a key demographic for the Democratic Party in Florida, are more committed to Nixon than to Vindman in this survey.

If Nixon is the nominee, she wins the group 78% to 8%. If the pick is Vindman, he would also take Black voters, but by a smaller margin: 73% to 10%.

Women also seem to prefer Nixon to Vindman. Moody actually carries female voters 47% to 44% against Vindman, a recent arrival to the state after his military career. Nixon splits the group with Moody, with each candidate taking 46% in the poll.

Vindman ultimately believes that voters with no party affiliation, or NPAs, will be the key in the election, and they simply aren’t looking at the race yet.

“NPAs are probably just not paying that much attention. They’re busy living their lives. I think Democrats and Republicans tend to be more plugged in. NPAs less so. They’re not as ideologically driven, which means that they’re not as locked in,” Vindman said.

“So the bulk of my efforts, especially as we get into the endgame of this campaign, is going to be figuring out how to connect with NPAs in the I-4 corridor — going out and connecting with communities not on the basis of politics, but on the basis of delivering a brighter future. That’s going to be the struggle.”

Vindman said his efforts are already bearing fruit, with 7% of his donors being Republicans and 13% being no-party voters.

But in the UNF poll, Vindman and Nixon each take 43% of no-party voters in hypothetical General Election heats. This suggests that his appeal to independent voters is not particularly stronger than his opponent’s, a state legislator who has represented part of Jacksonville for six years.

Vindman said he would like to raise $55 million for his campaign to defeat Moody. He has raised roughly $17 million so far for what would be a very formidable challenge.

Moody, elected twice to be Florida’s Attorney General, outperformed Gov. Ron DeSantis both times they shared a ballot in 2018 and 2022. Vindman’s challenge, should he win the nomination, will be to find a way to reach voters that Sean Shaw and Aramis Ayala could not.