JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — At 7:23 p.m., two young campaign staffers stopped mid-interview and ran toward a television at Angie Nixon’s election night watch party. The early returns showed Nixon ahead of Republican Sen. Ashley Moody. The two women jumped and screamed together.
Moments earlier, they had described feeling nervous but hopeful. One, 23, had never worked on a political campaign before. The other, 21, had worked on campaigns before and said she planned to keep doing it. They said Nixon’s field team had grown from eight staffers at the start of the campaign to more than 100. Helping build it, they said, was a chance to be part of history.
Later that night, both women were in tears.
Moody defeated Nixon, a Democratic state representative, in Tuesday’s special election for Florida’s U.S. Senate seat. With 99% reporting, Associated Press results showed Moody with 50.9% of the vote and Nixon with 48%.
Earlier in the evening, an older woman told her niece that the hope she felt in the room reminded her of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. She said she was excited to be part of what she saw as history and felt she was on the right side of it.
READ MORE: Angie Nixon broke the rules of campaigning in Florida. Is it enough to win?
While votes were still being counted, Jacksonville City Council member Raham Johnson told the crowd he had been out since 5 a.m. He thanked supporters and told them their work was just beginning.
Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, said his organization had endorsed Nixon in the primary because of her work in her community. He recalled hearing people argue that Florida was a lost cause and asked the crowd whether they would keep organizing after Election Day.
“No matter what happens tomorrow, we continue to organize because that’s what our people do,” Mitchell said.
Before Nixon came out to concede, supporters saw the results on their phones. People kept talking, but the excitement that had sent the two staffers running to the television had faded. Some cried. Others murmured that people had failed her.
When Nixon addressed the crowd, she acknowledged how much the loss hurt and told supporters she was proud of what they had built together. As she spoke, people shouted, “We love you!” Nixon told them she loved them, too.
“When we started this campaign, people told us it could not be done,” Nixon said.
She recalled being told that a working-class Black woman and state representative from Jacksonville’s Moncrief neighborhood couldn’t compete with the political establishment, raise enough money or build a statewide campaign. She pointed to her primary win and the organizing that followed, from the Panhandle to the Florida Keys. Supporters had knocked on doors in the Florida heat, called voters who felt no one was listening and organized in churches, barbershops and living rooms, she said.
“We have built something that no election outcome can take away from us,” Nixon said.
Nixon said her campaign had drawn more than 100,000 volunteers. She thanked supporters who gave $5 when they barely had $5 to spare and those who worked a full shift, picked up their children and went back out to knock on doors or call voters.
With tears in her eyes, Nixon thanked the volunteers who had been organizing for decades and those who were just getting started.
“Some of you all have never volunteered for a campaign in your life until now,” Nixon said. “And some of you all have been fighting this fight longer than I have been alive.”
She turned to what Floridians would face the next morning. A mother working two jobs would still need affordable child care, she said. A senior would still have to pay for prescription drugs. Families would still sit around kitchen tables trying to figure out how to cover rent, insurance and health care.
“Change can’t wait for the next election,” Nixon said.
“That’s right,” someone in the crowd answered.
Nixon spoke directly to young people, especially Black girls and children growing up in neighborhoods like Moncrief. She urged them to speak up and take their place in rooms where decisions are made.
She also called on supporters to organize in all 67 Florida counties, encourage more working-class people to run for office and make room for those who had stepped forward for the first time.
Before the results came in, the 21-year-old staffer had already said she planned to work on campaigns again. Now Nixon was asking supporters to make sure people like the first-time staffer who had jumped beside her had a place to keep organizing.
Near the end of her concession speech, Nixon said she planned to run again in 2028. Then she told supporters they could still have a party – after which, they started to dance.
“We gonna be joyfully resistant, y’all,” she said.
This story was originally published by CommunityWire.Miami, an independent, community news outlet in the School of Communication at the University of Miami. The news service, staffed primarily by graduate journalism students, provides informative and interesting coverage of the university’s nearby cities.
