Angie Nixon, the Jacksonville state representative running for U.S. Senate in Florida, has spent the two months since her primary win getting called names that a lot of people say are about her race, not her politics. Her opponents say they’re just going after a socialist. The best way to judge is to put what was actually said side by side.
Nixon, a Democratic Socialists of America member, is challenging Republican Sen. Ashley Moody on Nov. 3. If she won, she’d be Florida’s first Black U.S. senator. She’s behind: a Mason-Dixon poll this month had Moody up 50% to 40%, The Miami Times reported.
What has Laura Loomer said about Angie Nixon?
Loomer, the far-right influencer with close ties to President Trump, called Nixon a “ghetto Black communist b****” in late August and said she meant “every word,” WJLA reported. She also wrote: “you speak Ebonics though, so maybe I need to bark at you and tug your leash and then you’ll finally understand,” Essence reported. The same week, she called Reps. Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley, former Rep. Cori Bush and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson “ghetto, entitled, race-obsessed, destructive black B*TCHES.”
Last week, Loomer posted video of Nixon dancing at an Oct. 7 fundraiser with LGBTQ supporters, called it “ghetto,” and wrote that “Twerking Trannies belong at the trap house. Not the US Senate!” Nixon answered Monday: “I can’t even twerk. So of course I was only doing the electric slide. … If you hate LGBTQIA+ people…just say so,” according to her post.
What did JD Vance say about Angie Nixon?
At an Oct. 2 rally in Lakeland, the vice president said: “When Angie Nixon calls herself a socialist, I think the right response is to say, ‘Then get the hell out of here. You don’t belong in America.'” Nixon, who was born in Jacksonville, called it a dog whistle. “We’re kind of used to it in the South: the disrespect, being Black people, the microaggressions, and the slights,” she told The Miami Times. In a fundraising email she wrote: “I don’t need JD Vance’s permission to belong here.”
Did Republicans condemn the attacks?
Some did. Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she “1000%” denounced Loomer’s “nasty, hateful” comments and warned they could hurt Moody. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore wrote that Loomer attacks Black women “because you believe peddling racism is good for your clicks and your business model.” We couldn’t find any public statement from Moody about Loomer’s remarks.
Nixon’s critics point to her own words, too. She has called DeSantis’ “stop woke” slogan “a racist dog whistle” and said of Republicans, “They are literally trying to kill us,” Breitbart reported. In an interview published Monday, she said Republicans fear that “if this new, darker group of people come into power, that we’re going to do to them what they’ve done to many of us for hundreds of years.” In August, she suggested without evidence that Moody or Trump “may have paid off Laura Loomer” to distract from a state scandal, TheGrio reported.
The BeezLoop Take
Criticizing someone for being a socialist is politics. Calling a Black woman “ghetto,” mocking her speech as “Ebonics” and saying she needs her “leash” tugged is not a close call. That’s racism, said out loud, by one of the president’s best-known allies, and the people who benefit from it owe voters an answer.
Vance’s line is different but still ugly. Telling an American citizen she doesn’t belong in her own country because of her politics is wrong whoever says it to whomever. Said to a Black woman in the South, it’s no surprise it lands the way it does. Nixon’s own talk about Republicans trying to “kill us,” and her evidence-free claim that Loomer was paid off, are over the top too, and they make her easier to dismiss. But one candidate’s heated words don’t excuse someone else’s racial slurs.
The open question: will Ashley Moody, who stands to win this seat, say whether she’s comfortable with how her side is talking about her opponent?
Also on BeezLoop: Angie Nixon fires back after Laura Loomer’s racist rant.
Sources: WJLA · Essence · The Miami Times · Joe.My.God. (Loomer and Nixon posts) · Breitbart · The Miami Times (Mason-Dixon poll) · CBS News (video)
