Angie Nixon came within three points of a U.S. Senate seat with a fraction of the money and a party chair who spent the summer doubting her. Florida can't afford two more years of Nikki Fried.
OPINION | By Joseph J. Jackson | ST. PETERSBURG (Nov. 12, 2026)
The short version
Under Fried, Democrats lost every statewide race in 2024 and 2026. Now she's taking credit for turnout Angie Nixon's coalition built.
She didn't call Nixon for three days after Nixon won the primary. A unity rally planned for the expected winner, Alex Vindman, got scrapped.
Fried's marijuana money ran through a friend's company, a blind trust and an ethics case, and ended up in Trulieve stock.
Her party fights itself more than it builds. Most Floridians only hear from it at election time.
This is an opinion. It reflects the views of the author.
Angie Nixon lost Florida's U.S. Senate race by less than three points. [1]
She did it after being outraised by millions. She did it after a Trump ally called her a "ghetto" slur on a national platform and said she meant every word. She did it after the Senate's top Democrat gave her a "we will see." And she did it after the chair of her own state party spent the summer telling reporters that socialism doesn't fly in Florida. [1][2][3]
The day after the election, Nikki Fried was asked about new leadership for the party. Her answer: "Nope, not on the table." Her term runs to 2028, she said. [4]
It needs to be on the table now. Resign, remove, replace.
A chair who doesn't win
Fried won one statewide race, by a hair, in 2018. In 2022 she ran for governor and lost the Democratic primary to Charlie Crist by 24 points. A few months later, Florida Democrats made her party chair anyway. [5]
Here's what happened next. In 2024, Trump carried Florida by 13 points. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell lost her Senate race by 13. The marijuana amendment got 56% and still failed. Republicans now outnumber Democrats in this state by about 1.5 million registered voters. [6][1][7]
Fried ran for a new four-year term in January 2025 anyway, and won it. Her argument then was that changing chairs every two years hadn't helped. Fair enough. So judge her on her own clock. Two cycles in, Democrats hold zero statewide offices. [8][9][10]
Credit she didn't earn
Now Fried is calling Florida "back to being purple." There were real gains on Nov. 3. Democrats netted 15 seats in the Florida House and broke the Republican supermajority. Pinellas and Miami-Dade, both red for Trump in 2024, went blue for David Jolly and Angie Nixon. [11]
But ask who brought those voters out. An FIU political scientist said Nixon's affordability message turned out younger voters, Black voters and progressives, and that turnout, especially in South Florida, gave Jolly a boost. Fried herself said on election night that Nixon was able to "energize the base." [12][4]
That's Nixon's coalition. And three months earlier, the chair didn't think she'd win.
What she said, what happened
People keep asking me why Fried brought in Vindman instead of backing Angie. Here's what the record actually shows.
She didn't recruit him, as far as the record shows. Alex Vindman, the Trump impeachment witness, moved to Broward County in 2023 and launched his Senate run in January 2026. National Democrats lined up behind him: the Senate Democrats' campaign arm and the party's national security wing. He raised about $16.3 million to Nixon's $975,000. When he jumped in, another candidate, former Brevard school board member Jennifer Jenkins, dropped out of the Senate race. [13][14][15][16]
What the party said
It was neutral in the primary and denied favoring Vindman. [17]
It tried several times to reach Nixon's team, and Fried didn't yell on their call. [18]
Democrats are "united" behind the ticket. [19]
What happened
Fried downplayed the insurgents' chances before the primary. [3]
A unity rally planned for the Saturday after the primary, when Vindman was the expected nominee, was scrapped after Nixon won. Nixon hadn't known about it, and the date didn't work for her. [20]
Fried didn't call Nixon until three days after she won. [17]
One Democratic official told Axios that Fried "was very disappointed that Angie won." [18]
When she did call, it turned into a shouting match, according to Axios. Fried pressed Nixon to back away from the Democratic Socialists of America. People who spoke with Nixon said she told Fried the party never cared about her campaign. The party disputed that Fried yelled. These accounts come from anonymous sources, and the two sides tell it differently. [18]
Then Vindman, the man who lost, gave the state party $400,000 and told his donors to give to Nixon. [20]
You don't get to doubt a candidate in August and bank her voters in November.
Where was the chair?
During the primary, Vindman's wife, Rachel Vindman, posted on Threads about an unnamed opponent. She called that person a "s— person" and told her to "buy some professional clothes." She wrote that she wouldn't say the person's name "because you're not worth it," but everybody knew who she meant. She deleted the post within hours and apologized to Nixon. [21][22]
State Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis called it "disgusting, tone deaf and beyond out of touch." The Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida sent the Vindman campaign an open letter about its treatment of Nixon. I couldn't find anything from the chair of the Florida Democratic Party. [21][23]
Then came Laura Loomer, a Trump ally, who called Nixon and four other Black women "ghetto" and worse. She didn't pretend it was anything else. She said she meant every word. [2]
Some of the hate aimed at Angie Nixon was openly racist. Some of it came dressed up as a comment about her clothes. Black women in politics know how thin the line between those two is.
Credit where it's due: on Aug. 31, Fried put out a statement in her own name condemning the racist attacks on Nixon, calling them part of a pattern against Black women in public life and calling on Sen. Ashley Moody to denounce them. "This is a test of character, not politics," she said. She's right. [24]
But a statement is the floor. It came when a Trump ally went after Nixon. There was nothing from the chair when the attack came from inside our own primary. Nixon needed a party chair on every TV set in the state, saying her name and taking the fight to them. Instead, Nixon ended the race telling Don Lemon that Black women are seen as the backbone of the party, and that the party needs to invest in their leadership, not just their labor. [25]
That's not a complaint about Republicans. That's about us.
The paper trail
Fried's marijuana story starts with a friend.
San Felasco Nurseries, a Gainesville nursery, belonged to Alan Shapiro. His daughter had been Fried's sorority sister at the University of Florida. When Florida legalized medical marijuana, Fried helped San Felasco win one of the state's first handful of licenses. Then she lobbied for it. Her lobbying reports show San Felasco paying her firm tens of thousands of dollars a quarter through 2016 and 2017. [26][27]
Two lawmakers and a lobbyist told Florida Trend that while she represented San Felasco, she urged legislators to limit how many companies could get licenses. That protects the companies that already have one. Fried says that isn't what happened. [26]
San Felasco paid her in more than cash. It gave her an equity stake. Weeks after she was elected agriculture commissioner in November 2018, Harvest Health bought San Felasco for about $65 million, and her stake vested. [28][29]
Now look at how it showed up on her disclosures. In 2017, she valued her one-person lobbying firm at $125,000, though it had no physical assets. The next year she listed the firm at zero. In its place was a blind trust holding one unnamed asset, Ignite Holdings, LLC, worth more than $360,000. Ignite Holdings turned out to be her stake in San Felasco. The Capitolist, the Tallahassee outlet that dug it out, wrote that she "attempted to hide" the stake "from public view." [30]
Follow the stake
2016–17: Fried lobbies for San Felasco, owned by her sorority sister's father, and helps it win a license.
Nov. 2018: Weeks after she's elected, Harvest Health buys San Felasco for about $65 million. Her equity stake vests.
2018 disclosure: The stake appears only as "Ignite Holdings, LLC" in a blind trust, worth more than $360,000.
2021: Days before her governor run, she adds $351,480 in unreported income. The ethics commission finds probable cause, unanimously.
2021–22: Trulieve buys Harvest. Fried holds about $183,000 in Trulieve and says she's selling after reporters ask.
March 2023: Weeks after she becomes party chair, the ethics case is dropped by voice vote.
Days before she launched her 2021 campaign for governor, she amended two disclosure forms to add $351,480 in income she hadn't reported. In December 2021, the state Commission on Ethics voted unanimously that there was probable cause she had failed to properly report income for 2017 and 2018. Evan Power, then the Leon County Republican chair, filed the complaint. He said it was about "failing to be transparent with the taxpayers of Florida." Fried's lawyer called the complaint "a calculated political effort." Her side said she, her lawyer and her accountant didn't know the original numbers were incomplete. [31][32][30]
In March 2023, a few weeks after she became party chair, the commission dropped the case by voice vote. One commissioner, Ed Moore, still pressed her lawyer at the hearing about who owned her lobbying firm and about income that hadn't been explained. The case was closed. The questions weren't answered. [33][34]
Then the stake moved again. In 2021, Trulieve, Florida's biggest marijuana company, bought Harvest in a $2.1 billion all-stock deal. That turned Fried into a Trulieve shareholder. Her 2022 disclosure showed about $183,000 in Trulieve. She said she was "in the process of liquidating" it only after reporters wrote about it, while she was running for governor on legalizing marijuana. [35][36]
Along the way, as agriculture commissioner, she created a medical marijuana advisory committee. Trulieve's CEO, Kim Rivers, was appointed to it in 2019. Fried said she had "no allegiances to any company." [37][28]
It's a pattern with her. When reports surfaced that she was close with Matt Gaetz, who carried the early marijuana bills she lobbied on, she called them a "lie" and the criticism "chauvinistic." By the 2022 primary, she was calling Gaetz "dangerous for our country." Charlie Crist's campaign mailed Democratic voters a flyer calling her a "Republican lobbyist for big tobacco and insurance companies." [38][39][40][41]
Florida's medical market is a closed club. A small number of licensed companies grow, process and sell their own product, and Trulieve is the biggest. Trulieve then spent more than $145 million on the 2024 legalization amendment, which failed, and more than $50 million on the 2026 version, which never made the ballot. Even some legalization supporters said the plan would hand the existing license holders a monopoly on recreational sales. [7][42][43][5]
Two campaigns. More than $200 million. Still no legal adult-use marijuana in Florida. [42]
The state's best-known cannabis politician ran the Democratic Party through both of those fights. She never turned legalization into a people's cause, separate from the company writing the checks.
A party at war with itself
Why are Florida Democrats so fractured? Some of it is bigger than Fried. Across the country, the party's progressive base and its establishment are fighting over who leads. Axios called the Nixon-Fried call exactly that fault line. [18]
But a chair's job is to manage that fight, not join it. Under Fried, the fights keep landing on her desk.
In 2024, she suspended the Democratic chairs in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Franklin counties, saying she was getting those parties "back on track." The party never made the specific violations public. State Rep. Anna Eskamani said it felt like "grace was given to some and not to others." A former Democratic National Committee member from Florida said Fried was using the party as an exploratory committee for her own run. Miami-Dade's acting chair said the county party, the biggest Democratic county in the state, had been doing its work with zero financial or administrative support from the state party. [44][45][46]
In 2025, the Democratic leader of the state Senate, Jason Pizzo, stood up on the Senate floor, called the Florida Democratic Party "dead" and left it. Pizzo was wrong to walk out. But Fried's answer was to call him one of the most ineffective leaders in memory and his exit "one of the best things to happen to the party in years." [47][48]
And this summer, she was on the phone with her own Senate nominee in a yelling match. [18]
Every one of those fights may have its reasons. Added up, it's a party that spends its energy on itself. Voters notice. Donors notice too.
Where's the bench?
When Fried took over the party in 2023, she said she'd recruit a new generation of Democratic leaders. So let's check. [49]
The party will give you numbers, and I'll put them up front. It says it recruited 800 Democrats to run for office in 2025 and 1,200 since then. It hired a year-round organizing staff it calls Pendulum. Its "Take Back Local" program backs candidates in local races and reports a 76% win rate. It pays student fellows on 13 college campuses to register voters. This year it put a Democrat on the ballot for every legislative seat. [50][51][52][53][54][55]
Sign-ups aren't a bench. Look at the 2026 statewide ticket, three years into her plan.
For governor, David Jolly: a former Republican congressman who joined the party in 2025. For U.S. Senate, Washington's pick was Alex Vindman, who moved here in 2023. The woman who beat him, Angie Nixon, built her own following over a decade, with a chair who doubted her. Gwen Graham, Annette Taddeo and José Javier Rodríguez rounded out the ticket. All three held office before Fried ever took over the party. [56][13][19]
Three years of "pipeline," and the people at the top of the ticket came from somewhere else.
The complaints aren't just mine. Jayden D'Onofrio, a 20-year-old college student who ran for the party's first vice chair in 2025, said some counties lack training and investment from the state party. This week, in Florida Politics, Democrat Diego Hernandez Moreno called on Fried to resign and said the party has to stop ignoring South Florida. [57][58]
The next generation of Florida leaders is already here: the people who'll fill the seats in Tallahassee and Washington when this crop moves up or moves on. Somebody has to find them, train them, fund them and stand behind them when they're attacked. That's the job. A chair who does it doesn't need a press release to prove it.
364 days a year
Here's the part nobody in Tallahassee wants to hear. Most Floridians never meet the Democratic Party. They meet a mailer in October and a text in November.
Every county has a Democratic Executive Committee. Most meet once a month, often at night, often on Zoom, often in a room nobody outside the committee knows about. The party does keep a statewide events calendar, and some counties post their meetings on it. But the meeting is set up for the people already in the room, not the neighbor who's never been. [59]
One longtime Democratic strategist, Steve Schale, said flatly in 2024 that the party isn't going to rebuild itself through the county committees. If that's true, it's an indictment. The county party is the only Democratic Party most people could ever walk into. [45]
It doesn't take money to fix this. It takes habits:
Post every meeting, every month, everywhere. Not just a party calendar: Facebook events, Threads, Nextdoor, library boards, local news calendars. Same day, same time, same place, so people can count on it.
Put a social on the calendar that isn't a meeting. A cookout, a trivia night, a volunteer cleanup. People join people, not agendas.
Post a recap the next morning. Three sentences and a photo: who came, what got decided, how to help. Then the people who missed it know there's a reason to come next time.
Run a new-member night every quarter, led by the youngest people in the room. That's where the bench starts.
Show up where people already are. Church picnics, school board meetings, HOA fights over flood bills. Being there in March earns the right to ask for a vote in October.
The state chair's job is to make every county do that, give them the tools and hold them to it, 364 days a year. Not to suspend the ones she's feuding with and call the rest "united."
Why the country should care
This state has 30 electoral votes and two U.S. Senate seats. National Democrats pulled back from Florida after 2018, and Fried says they need to invest here again. She's right. But donors put money into state parties that win, or ones they trust to build. When Florida gets written off, the whole country loses those seats. [60]
Their side
Fried says Democrats flipped more legislative seats this year than in almost 60 years, and that's real. The party says it recruited 1,200 candidates, built a year-round organizing program and contested every legislative seat. Fried condemned the racist attacks on Nixon and put out a unity letter backing Nixon and Jolly. Party officials say they tried repeatedly to reach Nixon's campaign, and the party denies favoring Vindman. Fried has said the suspended county chairs had compliance problems that predated her. National Democrats left Florida before Fried took over. [61][51][24][19][18][17][44][60]
On the money: the Ethics Commission dismissed the complaint against her, and the man who filed it is now chair of the Republican Party of Florida. Fried says she fixed her forms as soon as she learned they were wrong, that she went "above and beyond" to keep her interests apart from her job, and that she has called Florida's medical marijuana system unfair. The 2026 legalization effort was knocked off the ballot by DeSantis's petition law and the state's signature purge, not by her. [33][34][28][62][43]
I've weighed all of that. The gains came from candidates and voters who showed up in spite of the people telling them to slow down. And a case that was dropped isn't the same as a question that was answered.
Resign, remove, replace
Nikki Fried should resign before the 2027 organizing season starts. If she won't, the party members who elected her need to replace her: the county chairs and the state committeemen and committeewomen from every county.
It won't be easy, and the party's own rules show why. When Fried moved to oust three county chairs in 2024, it took a two-thirds vote of the party's Central Committee, and one of the three, Palm Beach's chair, survived with a majority against her. Whatever bar applies to the state chair, the same people will have to clear it. [63][44]
Replace her with someone from the coalition that just showed up. Someone who builds the bench between elections, not just at them. Someone who fights for a Black woman at the top of the ticket the first time she's attacked, not after the votes are counted.
Find your county Democratic chair and your state committeeman and committeewoman on your county Democratic Party's website. Call them. Ask them one question: are you voting to keep her?
And then go to their next meeting. Bring somebody.
Photo: Nikki Fried's official portrait as Florida agriculture commissioner, 2019. Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain). [64]
Sources
4. USA Today Network, "Is it Angie Nixon's Florida Democratic Party now?" Nov. 4, 2026
5. Washington Free Beacon, Trulieve ties to Florida Democrats, 2022
6. Hawaii Tribune-Herald (New York Times), Trump +13 and the 1.5 million voter gap
7. Cannabis Business Times, legalization dead for 2026; Trulieve 2024 spending, 56%
8. Florida Politics, Fried wins re-election as chair, Jan. 2025
11. Axios Tampa Bay, Democrats' 2026 Florida results, Nov. 4, 2026
13. CBS News Miami, Vindman eyes a Senate run (in Broward since 2023)
16. MCI Maps, Florida's Democratic primaries for governor and Senate
19. Florida Democratic Party, unity letter naming the 2026 ticket, Aug. 2026
20. New York Times via dnyuz, same story (unity rally, Vindman's $400,000)
21. WLRN/Florida Phoenix, the Vindman-Nixon primary and Rachel Vindman's post, Aug. 5, 2026
23. The Floridian, Progressive Caucus letter to the Vindman campaign, Aug. 2026
25. The Hill, Nixon calls Florida a "missed opportunity," Nov. 11, 2026
26. Florida Trend, profile of Nikki Fried (San Felasco and the license fight)
28. Orlando Sentinel, "Fried's links to cannabis complicate campaign," June 13, 2021
29. Alachua Chronicle/The Capitolist, Harvest bought San Felasco weeks after the election
30. The Capitolist, Fried's ethics defense (blind trust, Ignite Holdings)
31. Tallahassee Democrat via Yahoo, "Nikki Fried mired in ethics dispute," Dec. 2021
32. Orlando Weekly, Fried's lawyer responds to the ethics complaint, 2021
33. News Service of Florida via Daily Business Review, ethics case dismissed, March 2023
34. The Capitolist, ethics case dropped despite unanswered questions, March 2023
35. South Florida Sun-Sentinel, "Cannabis conflicts entangle campaign," June 13, 2021
36. Daily Caller News Foundation, Fried's Trulieve stake, July 2022
37. Star News Network, Trulieve CEO on Fried's advisory committee, May 2021
38. Miami Herald, "Nikki Fried likes to be an insider," Aug. 7, 2022
39. Florida Politics, Fried calls Gaetz criticism "chauvinistic," July 2022
40. The Floridian, Fried says Gaetz is "dangerous for our country," Aug. 2022
43. Fox 35, marijuana amendment fails to make the 2026 ballot
44. The Capitolist, party suspends three county chairs, March 5, 2024
45. NOTUS, "Florida Democrats Can't Even Win Over Themselves," March 28, 2024
46. Miami-Dade Democratic Party, statement on the suspension, 2024
47. WUSF, Jason Pizzo leaves the Democratic Party, April 25, 2025
48. New York Post via AOL, Fried's statement on Pizzo, April 2025
49. WLRN, Fried wants to rebrand the party and recruit a new generation, March 10, 2023
50. Florida Democratic Party 2025 results (via Sarasota County Democrats), Dec. 19, 2025
52. Florida Democratic Party, Pendulum organizing program, Aug. 2025
53. Florida Democratic Party, Take Back Local slate, July 2026
54. Florida Democratic Party, campus voter registration fellowship, Feb. 2026
55. The Capitolist, Democrats field a candidate for every legislative seat, 2026
56. Gray DC via Dakota News Now, Jolly joined the Democrats in 2025
57. Orlando Weekly, Jayden D'Onofrio runs for first vice chair, Jan. 2025
59. Florida Democratic Party events calendar (example: Collier County DEC meeting)
60. Florida Phoenix, "Once again, the Democratic blue wave misses Florida," Nov. 4, 2026
61. USA Today Network, "Is Florida GOP red in permanent ink?" Nov. 2026
62. Florida Politics, Fried on Florida's medical marijuana system, 2021
63. NBC News, Florida Democrats remove two county chairs (two-thirds vote), March 2024
Homepage and share image: Florida’s Historic Capitol and the Florida State Capitol, Tallahassee. Photo: Michael Rivera via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped).
