MIAMI — Florida Democratic Senate candidate Angie Nixon and independent progressive Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders countered the recent onslaught of campaign advertisements against her in a double-header rally in Gainesville Sunday.

“Why is it that when you turn on your TV screen, you see ugly ads against her hour after hour after hour? Why are the billionaires afraid of Angie Nixon?” Sanders asked during an impromptu speech outside, where hundreds of people gathered on a lawn adjacent to the University of Florida’s 800-person auditorium, after their main event had already reached capacity.

“The answer is she has the guts to take them on,” he told the energetic crowd gathered outdoors.

Nixon also addressed the millions spent on TV ads calling her a “socialist” during the indoor campaign event in Gainesville that followed.

“They’ve been running a whole lot of negative ads on your girl, just lying, just lying. And so I want you all to know that I need y’all to push back on that disinformation,” she implored the crowd of supporters.

State Republican political committees have been filling voters’ mailboxes with flyers calling Angie Nixon a “radical” and “socialist,” and tried to tie her to down ballot Democratic candidates they hope to defeat. Her Republican opponent Ashley Moody has spent more than $3.4 million on television and digital ads framing their race as one between “freedom and socialism,” according to AdImpact data reviewed by POLITICO.

“Bernie Sanders, who praised Fidel Castro in 2020, rallied for my socialist opponent, Angie Nixon,” Moody said on social media Sunday about their visit to the Cuban Club in Tampa Saturday. “Floridians whose families fled Castro’s socialist regime don’t need a lecture on it.” (Sanders said on CBS in 2020, “We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba — but you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad.”)

But Nixon and Sanders pushed back against Republicans’ narrative about her in two ways as they toured the state this weekend: both pitching Nixon’s policies as common sense solutions, not radical ideas, and embracing the well-funded attacks as evidence that she poses a threat to the status quo.

“Mark my words, when Angie wins here in Florida, it will be a spark that creates a political revolution from coast to coast,” Sanders said Sunday.

She and Sanders stopped in Melbourne, Tampa, Gainesville and Tallahassee over the weekend, but they didn’t make it down to Miami, which has the largest concentration of voters who’ve fled Cuba.

When asked why Miami didn’t get a visit, Nixon said they chose locations to both rally young people – like in Gainesville — and show up in Republican-majority areas like Brevard County to signal “we actually have some deep red support as well,” she told reporters Sunday.

‘Where I come from, none of that is radical’

Nixon, 42, joined the Democratic Socialists of America this summer, along with other minor parties like the Working Families Party, during the primary cycle. She has said she agrees with part of their platform, but not the entirety. She won the Democratic nomination by a landslide in August despite being massively outspent by her opponent Alexander Vindman.

The longtime community and labor organizer has been an outspoken progressive voice in the state legislature since she was elected in 2020. Now, running for Senate, she’s relying on grassroots support to carry her in a state where Republicans have a massive voter registration advantage.

Nixon laid out her vision for Medicare for All and raising the minimum wage for working people at the rally in Gainesville.

“Ashley Moody thinks these basic and common sense things are extreme, radical, socialist,” she said, dropping her voice to the low tones of the campaign ads against her on the final word, “because it’s easier to call me names than to explain why she keeps voting to make life harder for working people.”

“If believing a mother working two jobs should earn enough to put food on the table is radical, then call me a radical,” she went on to say.

“If believing that no family should go bankrupt because somebody got sick is radical, then what?” she asked the crowd, who responded with a resounding, “Call me a radical.” The chant went on for multiple other promises focused on working people.

Two young attendees at Sunday’s rally told the Herald/Times the attacks against Nixon translate to them as almost comical misinformation.

“I find it really funny. It’s comedic to me because it’s not true. She herself is a small business owner. Obviously, she’s said it herself she believes in capitalism, you can tell by her actions,” said James Blackburn, a freshman member of the University of Florida’s college Democrats. This election cycle is his first time voting.

Freshman Stetson University student Heidi Cusic, who grew up in Orlando, said she found the attacks against Nixon to be “really deep-rooted in miseducation, especially around communism, socialism and things like that.” She took a two-hour bus ride from DeLand to see Sanders and Nixon, ahead of voting for the first time this year.

For Nixon, her message against Republicans’ line of attacks came back to how she grew up in Jacksonville, as a working class person and single mother at one point.

“Where I come from, none of that is radical. It’s just common sense,” Nixon said. “It is just basic decency. It is taking care of our neighbors.”

©2026 Miami Herald. Visit at miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.