Florida Isn’t Red. Democrats Just Stopped Showing Up.

Activism

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October 7, 2026

With more than 900,000 Puerto Rican voters, Florida can be won in 2026 and put in play for 2028. Give Angie Nixon the chance she deserves.

A supporter holds a campaign brochure supporting Democratic US Senate candidate Angie Nixon in Miami, Florida, on August 15, 2026. The brochure reads, in Spanish, “Change can’t wait.”(Joe Raedle / Getty Images)

It’s Groundhog Day in Florida, and this time a US Senate seat is on the line. While Democratic institutions and Washington pundits may count Florida out, Florida is in play. This week, Angie Nixon said Chuck Schumer and the Democratic leadership will be investing. This is good, and now it’s time to make sure we focus on Latino voters.

Florida is not a red state. It is an under-invested one. And Angie Nixon has a path to victory—but it requires turning out Latino voters, especially Florida’s large Puerto Rican community.

Florida has over 900,000 Puerto Rican voters; it’s time to bring them back and turn them out. In 2016 and ’24, we learned an important lesson: The key to winning is not just turning out the base but also cultivating voters years in advance.

As a political strategist, I’ve worked on many campaigns across this nation, especially around the Latino vote. I could tell when the investment was there because we won when we invested in Latinos. Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico built the Southwest wall around Latino voters. And that wasn’t just turning out voters overnight; that was long-term investment.

In Florida, I watched Democrats ignore the long game in 2020 and neglect Latino and Puerto Rican voters at their peril. The lack of investment was the nail in the coffin. In 2024, nothing changed. I begged national donors and congressional and US Senate committees not to make the same mistake. Now it’s 2026, and the election is a month away. Florida has more than 900,000 eligible Puerto Rican voters who could vote Democrat. But we haven’t seen a single real ad aimed at them or a comprehensive Latino engagement plan that gives Angie Nixon what she needs to get over the edge.

Nixon has built her campaign on a simple message: Change can’t wait. And it’s time Democrats in DC and nationwide start acting like they believe that message, too.

Current Issue

The political environment is there. The latest New York Times/Siena poll has Democrats leading 64 to 29 among Hispanic likely voters, with the cost of living as their top worry. Another recent poll shows Trump’s disapproval rating among Hispanics is 77 percent. One other recent NBC poll shows Democrats have a 24-point lead on whom Latino voters want to see in control of Congress.That marks a significant shift from 2024, when Trump won roughly half of Latino voters; since then, his approval among them has fallen sharply.

And we’re already seeing that shift play out on the ground. In Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, the Trump flags are gone, and former supporters are angry about the economy and immigration. If Democrats are leaning into Texas and Mississippi, there is no excuse to skip Florida.

Republicans certainly aren’t treating Florida like a race they can ignore. And right now, polls have the Republican operatives running scared. Just this month, Florida Democrats outpaced Republicans in voter registration for the first time since January 2021. The momentum is there, and it’s time for donors and Democratic institutions to stop hitting “pause.” Republicans are on the defensive, and it’s time to capitalize.

And I know: Angie Nixon is a democratic socialist candidate. But her policies aren’t out of step with what voters want. For years, Democrats in Florida have run lackluster candidates that voters just aren’t excited about. But this time around, the DSA and community groups ran an exciting campaign that energized voters, and it’s time to take it over the top.

Nixon is a union organizer and mother from Jacksonville who watched her mom work two jobs to get by. In the Florida House, she expanded childcare, challenged corporate price gouging, and led the fight against DeSantis’s voting maps.

She won her primary because the same old playbook wasn’t working. The same old blue Democrats just don’t work anymore. She is tough, says what she feels, and can be a brawler for the working class in the US Senate—something that Democrats have been lacking and voters have found in elected officials like Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Analilia Mejia, and, dare I say it, Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Meanwhile, discontent and frustration are swelling over Florida’s draconian policies. Rising costs and the erosion of civil liberties are angering Democrats and independents alike, who feel Trump and his sycophants are more focused on culture wars than the price of gas at the pump.

Angie Nixon is the nominee Democratic voters chose to lead them. It’s time Democratic institutions such as the DSCC and national donors started letting the money flow.

This matters down the ballot, too.

Florida’s Ninth Congressional District, a Puerto Rican stronghold, was redrawn into a seat Trump would have carried by nearly 18 points. Turning out Puerto Rican voters can pull that race back from underwater.

In 2024, Republicans out-organized us for Latino voters almost everywhere. In Nevada and Florida, GOP captains worked building by building, floor by floor. In Pennsylvania, abuelitas organized their blocks for Trump. Latino barbershops became Trump territory. Groups like SEIU, the Working Families Party, Florida Rising, and Make the Road PA did what they could with almost nothing to stop the bleeding.

Then came the October surprise: the “island of garbage” remark. Tony Hinchcliffe, a comedian, made the remark at a Madison Square Garden rally for Trump, saying, “I don’t know if you know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” The remark went viral, and Puerto Rican voters were rightly offended. Our culture runs deep in our communities, and our island is our legacy.

But by then, half the country had already voted. Consultants and committees scrambled to fund programs that should have been running for months. The money arrived late, as it always does, and by that time it was too late.

The postmortem was telling: Postelection research found that if voters had known sooner about how Republicans viewed Puerto Rico, many would have voted differently. A poll sponsored by La Brega y Fuerza Fund and other partners found that Republican-identified Puerto Rican voters were contacted more often than Democratic ones.

That is the kicker: We were turning out voters, but we failed to cultivate them enough.

That’s why La Brega y Fuerza Acción has mapped every Puerto Rican voter in the country and is working to engage them on issues affecting both the diaspora and the island. We are putting Puerto Rican issues front and center in states like Florida because we want to cultivate voters, tackle affordability, and confront the crisis in Puerto Rico. We just need the support to do it.

Over the last 15 years, more than 1 million people moved from Puerto Rico to the US mainland, with Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania now the top destinations. Last week, La Brega y Fuerza hosted a town hall with thousands of Puerto Ricans from Florida, Pennsylvania, and the island. Ninety percent had a family member affected by the water crisis. Eighty percent were worried about the financial crisis and elderly relatives at risk. Many had families hit by blackouts, and many oppose overdevelopment like the Esencia megaproject in Cabo Rojo, which critics warn could use more than 1.25 million gallons of water a day in a place where people already face outages. And yes, Puerto Ricans care about ICE too. The raids aren’t abstract for citizens with mixed-status neighbors, coworkers, and family.

So in Florida, our biggest miss is Puerto Rican voters: eligible voters who can participate on day one and have a direct stake in the issues.

That’s why investing in Florida now isn’t just about 2026 but also 2028. Winning now keeps Florida in the race for years. Democrats can end the Florida dry spell, or they can watch a third cycle of “next time” go by.

So let’s give Angie Nixon the chance she deserves. Let’s play to win in Florida. Our democracy depends on it.

Camille Rivera

Camille Rivera is a Democratic Latino political strategist who has worked on dozens of campaigns targeting Latino voters, and president of La Brega y Fuerza en Acción, an organization focused on building a pipeline of power between the Puerto Rican diaspora and the island. She advised the Zohran Mamdani mayoral campaign, helped propel Representative Analilia Mejia to victory, and is president of New Deal Strategies.