Florida Senate money race heats up

We are two weeks out, exactly two weeks out from Election Day. It is hard to believe. It's been a whirlwind, and I'm sure the next two weeks are going to be as much of a whirlwind, too. So a lot of things going on, a lot of big headlines and stories to talk about. And joining us live now to talk about how it would make sense of all of this, we are pleased to be joined by Kimberly Leonard, Politico reporter and the author of the Florida Playbook newsletter that you can get in your inbox every weekday. Kimberly, thanks so much for joining us here on Florida Live. Yeah, of course. Two weeks until election day. Hard to believe. It is busy. Things are getting busier. And this is an interesting election season to really be kind of tuned in to what's happening. And I know that's one of the things that you wrote about today in a Florida playbook, some of these odd midterm currents that we're seeing here in Florida right now. Oh, my goodness. Yes, I know. I can't really shake some of the trends that I'm noticing. I spend a lot of time talking to voters and at different campaign events, listening into focus groups. And there's just seems to me that there are going to be probably a good number of ticket splitters, which is when people might go in and say, OK, I'll vote Republican for Senate and Democrat for governor. And so if you look at some of the early voting results coming in, you're obviously not going to know how those individual people voted. Right. you're only going to know what party they personally belong to. And I've also heard about a good number of people who are going to be what's called undervoting, where you might go in and say, hey, I'm just going to check off, you know, Angie Nixon for Senate and I'm going to leave Governor blank, something like that, you know. And so I have seen some of that happen as well. And then the big wild card is, of course, our no party affiliated voters. We do know that in the last couple of election cycles, they have tended to be more Republican-leaning. However, this time around may be really different because, especially looking at this U.S. Senate race, you have Angie Nixon, who's a progressive. And, you know, when I talk to a good number of NPAs, they actually tend to be more progressive themselves. So those are some people that might have opted to not even vote the last couple of election cycles and now are getting back into the mix. Is there a huge number of them compared to the more Republican-leaning ones? I don't know. But these are all things that I'm sort of spinning around in my head about as we wait to see what happens. Does that make it even harder to kind of predict what we might see with some of these races then, just because with that kind of potential out there, we don't necessarily really know what to expect? Definitely. It really, really does. And I think that would have been true regardless of who is at the top of the ticket. But there are so many different kinds of things happening this year. And, you know, I'm in Miami-Dade County, for example, and I can tell you it looks to me like Miami-Dade is going to flip back to blue this year after going for Trump and DeSantis the last couple of election cycles. We are the largest county in the state. So if Republicans lose Miami-Dade by a significant amount, and I'm not making predictions about House races or anything like that. I'm just talking about statewide, the county, those statewide elected officials who are running. Then those votes have to be made up elsewhere, right? And so are they going to be made up enough? Are enough people going to show up to kind of balance it out? I'm just not sure. And so it's just something I'm thinking about, especially because I talked to James Fischbach, who was a Republican who ran for governor, and he is not leaving off the table the possibility of endorsing Angie Nixon for senate he says he wants to go to an Ashley Moody event first to make a determination um and when he visited the Ashley Moody event he said that there were people who voted for him who are now voting for Angie Nixon for senate so there's just a lot of kind of weird stuff going on right um and and i think a lot what's true that we have to realize is that a lot of americans you know they don't necessarily fall along party lines they might just like someone personally more they might just see someone more um they might just agree with universal health care or be mad at Trump? And so it's just a year where I never make any predictions. But this year, I really, really just feel completely like I don't know what's going to happen here. Yeah. And so, like you said, some of those issues don't necessarily fit neatly into red or blue or whatever. And so some of the big things that we're hearing talked about. So it's hard to know what to make sense of what we're seeing. It really is, and I'm looking forward to kind of being around all over Florida next week and getting the temperature a little bit more of how people are feeling. Now, the Senate race, I know you've been looking into kind of the finances of that. The money race there in that race between Moody and Nixon has really been heating up. It has. You know, Angie Nixon, let's not forget, people have been reporting that Alex Vindman during the primary outraised her 16 to 1. It's actually 20 to 1 when you count all of the outside. uh, it was sort of the victory fund and the outside, uh, you know, leadership committee that went toward his election and his election. Not that he spent very much of it during the primary. He basically treated the primary nomination process as a done deal, which obviously ended up being a mistake for him. But Angie Nixon did outraise Ashley Moody during the third quarter. And I've been looking at, and it was by about $2 million. So that's not a huge amount. And Senator Moody still has more money in the bank than Rep. Nixon does. But I have seen some of the newest reports come in as well. So we'll start getting those kind of every day or every other day that is still showing Angie Nixon, at least for her campaign, outpacing Senator Moody continuously. Now, she has not gotten the big backing from Democrats that some of the other Democrats across the country who are running for Senate are getting. But she did have Senator Bernie Sanders with her this past weekend. There was a ton of energy, thousands of people even waiting outside. So this is one of the races where, you know, I think things could get really interesting. She's been flooding the zone. And I know that AOC is going to be campaigning with her next week. And so it's just interesting because there have been, you know, over the years, there have been so many Democrats that have worked to distance themselves from national progressives. And Rep. Nixon is just like, come on in, let's do this, you know, and does all these big events. So that's why it's kind of hard to predict, you know, where things land. Well, and that's another reason this, you know, what's happening and what might happen is kind of so odd because we are seeing some of those kind of conventions of the past, you know, couple cycles maybe kind of going by the wayside a little bit. Yeah, completely. But we also know that when Democrats have run kind of a more traditional, more centrist Democrat, that they actually haven't done well. So it's interesting that Republicans seem to think Representative Nixon is this amazing boogeyman for them. But I don't know. I don't know if that's going to be the case. There are so many people who sat out the last couple of elections who may be motivated by her message this time. It's going to be interesting to see. Meanwhile, over these last couple of weeks here, uh we know there are a lot of tv ads running in a lot of markets across the state uh is that are we going to expect more of that over the next couple of weeks here sorry about my dog um yes you can continue to expect a lot more spending in fact there is uh one one billionaire in uh in florida who's spending millions of dollars to help representative nixon by running ads about hope florida now the republican party of florida is trying to put a stop to that they're actually trying to have a judge block those ads. Doesn't look like that's what's going to happen. But I can tell you, I've listened into focus groups and when voters hear about what happened, they really don't like it, even though the governor himself has, you know, talked about it a lot and has pushed back. And an appeals judge ruled that this grand jury report about Hope Florida be expunged. You know, the more there's kind of press and coverage about it, I think the more that voters are kind of going to look it up and look to find out more. It doesn't mean it sways them necessarily, but I can tell you that nationally we've heard a lot of Democrats kind of make a lot of noise about corruption of the Trump administration. And so that's where it kind of, for those who view it this way, kind of ties into some of that broader messaging so that Democrats are a little bit more unified in what they're saying and trying to appeal to people, right, where they're saying corruption is what is causing these high prices. And so that's kind of the latest ad to go up. the governor's race is, you know, close to 100 million in ads, I want to say. So that's very, very expensive. Senator Moody's campaign has spent at least 7 million in ads, most of which has been attacking Representative Nixon, tying her to socialism. But again, with Miami-Dade, I don't see a lot of those ads down here. And we have a lot of people down here who have, you know, traumatic experiences with left-wing dictatorships. So it's just interesting how little investment seems to be happening in the largest county in the state. Last thing here before I let you go, Kimberly, what are you watching for? What's next in Florida politics? Well, President Trump is coming to town. He will be in Fort Myers on Friday. I'm still waiting for a final list about which Republicans will be joining him. I do know that Representative Donald's will be joining him. In fact, Representative Donald's is going to be even here in Miami this afternoon. So I'll get to chat with him a lot. There is a Lincoln Day dinner for the Miami-Dade GOP that I'm also going to be popping over to see. And then I will be heading up to Clearwater because Rep. Donald's, Rep. Luna, and Senator Moody are all going to be doing a rally together. So lots of kind of busy closing arguments going on here. Oh, busy, no doubt. I am sure you will be staying busy. We appreciate you joining us here and talking politics with us on this Tuesday. Kimberly Leonard, political reporter, author of the Florida Playbook newsletter. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you.