Florida has been viewed as a lost cause for Democrats for years. Donald Trump won the Sunshine State in all three of his presidential campaigns, Republicans have been in full control of the statehouse and the governor’s mansion for 30 years, and Democrats haven’t won a statewide race there since 2018. However, with under three weeks to go before the midterms, Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried says Democrats are well within striking distance of a historic victory this fall and that Florida voters have had enough of one-party rule. In a Wednesday interview with Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson, Fried discussed various topics, including:
Florida Democrats’ chances in this year’s U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races
How both progressive Senate candidate Angie Nixon and moderate gubernatorial candidate David Jolly are both making inroads with voters
Why Trump has become damaged goods even in his adopted home state, and how Democrats have flipped 48 seats in the last 18 months
The corruption scandal dogging Republican Senator Ashley Moody
How Florida Democrats are competing with Republicans massive fundraising advantage — with help from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders
Why Florida Republicans’ “dummymander” may backfire
How Florida voters can make sure their votes are counted
Why Democrats across the country can’t afford to concede Florida
Raw America is only able to bring you in-depth conversations with political leaders like Nikki Fried — who is giving her inside perspective on how Democrats are making significant gains in one of the reddest states in the country — because of support from paying subscribers.
Gibson opened the conversation by asking Fried whether the latest polls that show Angie Nixon (** who Raw America interviewed in August**) and David Jolly within the margin of error in their respective races matched what she’s seeing on the ground. Fried said that after the last few elections, she’s less interested in what individual polls are saying versus trends, and that she also has an exclusive insight into candidates’ internal polling for races at all levels.
“While the methodology is all different, while the locations are different, types of people polling, everything seems to be pointed to the same direction,” Fried said. “From congressional seats to legislative seats to statewide races, everything is within the margins of error on both sides of these races.”
Fried also noted that Democrats’ optimism is partially due to voters’ anger with Republicans both in Washington and in Tallahassee.
“People are so pissed about not only what has happened in Washington, D.C., but we’ve had one party controlling the state for 30 years,” she said. “What has that power given to the people of our state? How has that made their lives better? And it just hasn’t. And so the people of our state are ready to take back their power.”
Gibson observed that Democrats’ candidates at the top of the Florida ballot come from very different places on the ideological spectrum. While Nixon is an outspoken progressive running on issues like Medicare for All, Jolly — a former Republican congressman from the Tampa area who left the party during Trump’s first term — is running a more moderate campaign focused on the cost of living. Regardless of their differences, both candidates have been gaining significant ground over the past several months.
Fried said both candidates are seeing success because they’re running on economic populism and capitalizing on bipartisan outrage over Donald Trump’s war in Iran and his unpopular tariffs.
“[Republicans are] putting billionaires first. They’re putting Elon Musk first. They’re putting the tech bros first. They’re putting Trump first. They’re putting the MAGA brand first. Not the people,” Fried said. “While Angie and David are certainly on a very wide spectrum of solutions, they’re honing in on the same message: that people can’t afford to live here.”
The Florida Democratic Party chair also highlighted a report released this week showing that utility companies have been wining and dining the officials tasked with regulating them, and said voters are now no longer voting based purely on partisan affiliation.
“People are not wanting labels,” Fried said. “They want solutions. They want fighters who are going to show up.”
Gibson called attention to signs that Trump has become damaged goods even in his adopted home state, with Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds removing mentions of the president from his campaign website and Republican Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar releasing an ad about how Trump’s ICE crackdowns are alienating Latino voters in the Sunshine State. And he pointed out that the last time Fried appeared on Raw America, Democrats had just successfully flipped the Florida House district that includes Mar-a-Lago.
Fried said that seat is just one of four dozen that Florida Democrats have taken from Republicans since the spring of 2025. This includes mayoral races in both the City of Miami, Boca Raton and Key West; a state Senate seat in the Tampa area, and even a seat in ruby-red Escambia County, which Fried said Democrats hadn’t won in decades. She also dismissed Republicans downplaying those victories as flukes.
“Republicans want to say, ‘Oh, special elections, special elections,’ but the reality is these weren’t special elections,” Fried said. “These are municipal calendar elections that happen every two to four years, and we weren’t winning those previously.”
Fried gave a shout-out to Pendulum, which is the state Democratic Party’s year-round statewide organizing program. According to Fried, Pendulum has made roughly 3.9 million voter contacts via phone, text, and canvassing over the last 18 months. She also observed that Trump’s draconian immigration agenda has taken a serious toll on Florida’s agricultural hubs.
“The fields are barren. People are not showing up to work because of all the ICE raids,” she said.
Fried also heaped criticism on the “Alligator Alcatraz” ICE detention facility as little more than a $1.6 billion giveaway of public money to Republican donors through no-bid contracts. She said those same donors are now funneling money back to GOP candidates like Byron Donalds and Ashley Moody.
“The energy here is we’re pissed, we are ready for change, and finally, the Democratic Party is showing up and giving us a reason to come out and vote for them,” Fried said.
Gibson then pivoted to former Florida Attorney General-turned-Senator Ashley Moody, who was appointed to her seat after Marco Rubio joined the Trump administration and is now running for a full six-year term. He asked whether the Hope Florida scandal — in which roughly $10 million in Medicaid settlement money was funneled to various Republican groups through Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis’ nonprofit — was haunting Moody on the campaign trail.
Fried first laid out the timeline of the scandal. As she explained, Medicaid provider Centene was caught over-billing states, prompting Florida to negotiate a $67 million settlement. Somewhere along the way, $10 million of that money went to Hope Florida before finding its way to two other nonprofits, before eventually trickling down to a political action committee controlled by James Uthmeier — the current attorney general of Florida who previously served as Gov. Ron DeSantis’s chief of staff.
From there, Fried explained that the money went to the Republican Party of Florida, which used it to defeat the 2024 ballot initiative to legalize recreational cannabis across the Sunshine State. That amendment received 54 percent of the vote, which, while still a clear majority, fell short of the 60% threshold Florida requires for new constitutional amendments.
“That money got from a negotiation that should have been going back into Medicaid and helping sick children,” Fried said.
As attorney general, Moody had to sign off on the settlement. Fried said public documents show how Moody’s office went to great lenghts in order to separate her from the deal, but that the paper trail still ultimately leads back to her.
“She signed off on it, and there’s plenty of paper documents,” Fried said. “She was right in the middle of this mess. Got rewarded by getting that U.S. Senate appointment, as did James Uthmeier, who got his appointment now to attorney general.”
Fried said Moody’s voting record in the Senate also hasn’t helping her chances of reelection adding that she votes with Trump “almost 100% of the time,” including on his so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (which Fried called the “big BS bill”) which led to healthcare cuts for hundreds of thousands of Floridians. Moody is also a consistent supporter of Trump’s deeply unpoplar war in Iran.
Gibson asked about the several million dollars Sen. Bernie Sanders spent from his leftover campaign funds to support candidates around the country, including Nixon, and whether Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had reached out about investing in the increasingly competitive race.
Fried acknowledged that Republicans will have a major financial advantage, pointing to Donalds receiving $10 million checks from hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin and million-dollar checks from tech executives, data center interests, and the insurance industry.
“We don’t play like that, and so we don’t get those types of financial resources,” Fried said.
She said the Sanders money was sent to the Florida Democratic Party on Nixon’s behalf, and the party and campaign are working together to decide whether it’s best spent on field staff, TV ads, or digital ads. Fried said the party’s strategy for the last several cycles has been to build a volunteer apparatus rather than try to match Republicans dollar for dollar on the airwaves.
“If anybody’s asking, ‘Where’s all the commercials?’ Well, at the end of the day, that costs money, and we’d rather put the money on the ground talking to people and not just propaganda on TV,” Fried said.
While she hasn’t personally spoken with Schumer, Fried said Sens. Chris Murphy and Ruben Gallego were in Florida that day to show their support for Nixon and Florida Democrats.
Gibson pivoted to the congressional map Florida Republicans redrew earlier this year, years ahead of the normal redistricting schedule, after DeSantis unveiled color-coded red and blue maps on Fox News. He asked whether the gerrymander had backfired.
Fried said she first sensed what was coming last summer, when she watched DeSantis and Trump discussing on camera during a tour of Alligator Alcatraz whether Republicans should have gotten more seats in the last round of redistricting.
“My spider senses went off, and I said they’re going to play for something,” Fried said, adding that the party immediately began preparing its legal team and Democratic legislators to fight back.
Fried noted that Florida voters added the Fair Districts amendments to the state constitution in 2010, banning maps drawn for partisan advantage. She said DeSantis’s staff openly admitted to lawmakers that they used partisan data to draw the lines, and that neither the House nor Senate sponsor could defend the map during floor debate.
“They know full well that they broke the Florida Constitution,” she said.
But Fried argued that by spreading Republican voters thin to target the state’s eight Democratic-held seats, the GOP created a “dummymander” that leaves several of its own seats vulnerable, since she said Florida has shifted at least 10 points to the left.
“If you’re an R+10 or below, which is about another five to seven seats, this moment may cost you your reelect or that open seat,” she said.
She pointed to Florida’s 16th Congressional District, where Republican National Committee chairman Joe Gruters’s wife is the GOP nominee in an R+7 seat, and where Fried said Democratic candidate Kelly Kirschner is leading in the polls.
“They can end up losing the RNC chairman’s wife in this dummymander that they just had to get through this year,” Fried said.
With many older Floridians voting by mail, and concerns about the Trump administration interfering with the Postal Service and mail ballots, Gibson asked Fried what she’d tell voters worried that their votes won’t be counted.
Fried said the party has had an extensive voter protection operation in place, including attorneys and volunteer poll workers, and used the August primaries as a test run. She also offered an unexpected source of reassurance.
“This is the weirdest thing for me to say,” Fried said. “Don’t anybody cringe when I say this. A little bit of trust in DeSantis on this issue, because he has been so forward on saying that Florida’s voting is the most secure in the country. … So anything less than that, he will have egg on his own face.”
Fried reminded voters that Florida does not count ballots by postmark, so mail ballots must be received by the county supervisor of elections by 7 p.m. on Election Day. She encouraged voters to track their mail ballots, use drop boxes, or vote early to avoid long lines.
“Regardless if you’re voting early, vote by mail, or on Election Day, make a plan, follow through with the plan, and then verify that your vote has actually been counted,” she said.
Gibson closed by asking what Fried would say to Democrats elsewhere who are hesitant to invest in Florida, given Republicans’ large voter registration advantage.
“There’s no choice,” Fried said. “Florida has to be back on the map.”
Fried pointed to population growth across the South, noting that Florida, Texas, and other Southern states are projected to gain congressional seats and electoral votes after the 2030 census. Without investment in organizing infrastructure in Florida, she warned, Democrats will struggle to win the House or the presidency.
“If we haven’t — and I use this very clearly — not spent in Florida, invested in Florida, that is infrastructure,” she said. “Otherwise, the math is not going to work.”
Fried also emphasized that roughly a third of Florida voters are independents, and that independents nationwide have been breaking heavily for Democrats.
“When you’ve got 60 to 70% of those independents breaking for Democrats, that’s how we’re winning these elections,” she said.
Finally, Fried argued that Florida has served as a testing ground for Project 2025, from attacks on Black political representation to removing Black history from textbooks and banning books, and that Democrats must win back the state’s diverse Latino communities if they want to expand their coalition.
“For the rest of the nation to see what is happening to democracy, you start here in Florida and you start in the South, because this is where democracy is first lost,” Fried said.
Election Day in Florida is November 3.
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