Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she is ready to campaign in Florida for two left-wing candidates, a move that hands Republicans fresh ammunition in a state where Democrats are already badly outnumbered.
Ocasio-Cortez told the Floridian that she is open to stumping for Democratic Socialists of America member Angie Nixon, who is running for a Florida U.S. Senate seat, and Pia Dandiya, the Democratic nominee in Florida's 22nd Congressional District.
"Yeah, I mean, we'll see. I'm always open to wherever people want me to be there, so I look forward to being back in Florida soon," Ocasio-Cortez said.
The New York congresswoman called Nixon "a history maker in her own right" and framed Republican criticism of the candidate as a distraction. She told the outlet that the GOP is "trying to dig a new low" and accused Republicans of leaning on racial grievance rather than debating policy.
"We need to be talking about healthcare and wages and they want to be swinging a lot of racially wrong and bigoted things back and forth because they want us talking about that."
But the decision to attach herself to Nixon's candidacy carries real political risk, and not because of Republican attacks. Nixon's own record, her public statements, and her financial disclosures give opponents plenty of material that requires no embellishment.
Nixon secured the Democratic Senate nomination in an upset primary victory. Fox News reported that she defeated Alexander Vindman, the former Army officer who testified during President Trump's first impeachment. Ocasio-Cortez formally endorsed Nixon for the general election matchup against Republican Sen. Ashley Moody.
Shortly after winning the primary, Nixon moved to distance herself from the Democratic Socialists of America label. When Sen. Moody publicly described her as a socialist, Nixon pushed back.
"You know, when people's voice start getting squeaky and really high pitched, usually they're lying. And Ashley Moody knows that I'm not a socialist."
Nixon insisted her alignment with DSA is limited to specific policy goals: "fighting for adequate public housing, as well as fighting for quality healthcare, as well as making sure that we are getting our veterans off the street, taking big money out of politics."
That claim is difficult to square with the rest of her public profile. Nixon is a dues-paying DSA member. She has been endorsed by Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley. And her platform, as National Review documented, includes abolishing ICE and eliminating private health insurance, positions that go well beyond "specific issues."
Ocasio-Cortez herself has publicly argued that Democratic Socialists are "fundamentally pro-democracy." Voters can decide whether a candidate who wants to abolish ICE and private insurance is simply fighting for veterans.
Nixon's rhetoric on the campaign trail has gone further than standard progressive boilerplate. Speaking at a Miami church, she told the audience: "We have nothing to lose but our chains."
She continued with a litany of grievances, accusing state leaders of spending "a billion dollars on a ballroom you'll never get to dance in" while denying healthcare funding, closing public schools to subsidize "for-profit private school education for the billionaires and the millionaires," and working to defeat ballot initiatives that should have funded healthcare for low-income children.
"Our chains are the fact that they are closing public schools so that they can subsidize their for-profit private school education for the billionaires and the millionaires, but they're closing schools in our neighborhood."
The "nothing to lose but our chains" language has been attributed to Assata Shakur, a convicted killer of a New Jersey state trooper who escaped prison and fled to Cuba. Nixon has reportedly pulled from Shakur's rhetoric on the campaign trail, a connection that would give any serious campaign strategist pause.
Ocasio-Cortez, for her part, has a pattern of making inflammatory public claims that later fall apart under scrutiny. Tying herself to a candidate who echoes a convicted cop killer's words fits that pattern.
The Miami church speech was not an isolated incident. Nixon also claimed that Republicans are "literally trying to kill us" and described Immigration and Customs Enforcement as "a weaponized paramilitary force designed to terrorize us," the New York Post reported.
The Department of Homeland Security responded forcefully. A DHS spokesperson called Nixon's allegations "disgusting, reckless and categorically FALSE," pointing to a 1,300 percent increase in assaults on ICE agents and an 8,000 percent increase in death threats against them.
The Republican National Committee treated the remarks as a gift. RNC spokeswoman Emma Hall said: "Every word out of Nixon's mouth is an in-kind contribution to Republicans in Florida and across the country."
President Trump weighed in on the primary result directly. On Truth Social, he called Nixon "a Radical Left Lunatic, who can't speak or think properly, and who will go down to certain defeat at the hands of Ashley Moody." He described the defeat of Vindman as "the most gratifying loss" of the primary night.
Nixon's policy positions are only part of the problem. Her personal finances tell their own story. Nixon earned at least $270,000 in 2025, yet she owes nearly $14,000 in unpaid IRS taxes and $17,600 in unpaid federal student loans, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
This is the same candidate who campaigns on imposing a five percent annual wealth tax on billionaires. But when it came to her own tax bill, Nixon had a different view.
"I ain't made $105 billion, but you making me pay $12,000 to the feds? Like, really? That's what we're doing? And they already took some of the taxes away anyway. I paid over $10,000. It's just, it is crazy."
On Facebook, she posted about her student loans: "Dear Student Loans. It's above me now. I don't wanna pay it back. Education supposed to be free."
Nixon also allegedly violated Senate disclosure rules by failing to report her IRS tax debt and student loan debts exceeding $10,000 on her official financial disclosure forms. A candidate who wants to raise taxes on everyone else while refusing to pay her own is not a credibility problem Republicans manufactured. She built it herself.
Ocasio-Cortez has drawn sustained conservative criticism for her political judgment, and endorsing a candidate with this kind of record will not quiet those critics.
Set aside the rhetoric and the unpaid taxes. The raw voter registration numbers in Florida make Nixon's candidacy an uphill climb that borders on futile. Republicans hold a registration advantage of 1,529,028 voters as of August 2026, a lead that grew by 14,000 in July alone.
Florida's last two Senate elections were not close. The 2022 and 2024 races were decided by more than 1.2 million and 1.3 million votes, respectively. That is a dramatic shift from 2018, when the margin was roughly 10,000 votes.
Into this environment, Florida Democrats nominated a DSA member who wants to abolish ICE and private health insurance, who quotes a convicted cop killer, who refuses to pay her own taxes, and who calls federal law enforcement a "weaponized paramilitary force." Ocasio-Cortez looked at all of that and decided to sign on.
Even some Florida Democrats seem to understand the problem. David Jolly, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, declared in his primary victory speech: "I reject socialism." That was not aimed at Republicans.
National Review's editors put the strategic reality plainly: "It is far more difficult to defend against charges of extremism when those charges are true."
Ocasio-Cortez has not been shy about inserting herself into public controversies that draw more heat than results. A Florida campaign swing would fit that pattern. Her presence on the trail would nationalize a race that Republicans already expect to win comfortably, giving Moody's campaign free footage of a New York progressive telling Florida voters what they need.
Nixon, meanwhile, opened a cafe in Jacksonville called "Cafe Resistance" and has a history of attention-grabbing social media posts. In one, she attributed a nosebleed she got at the Florida Capitol to the "trauma" of working with Republicans. Activist Laura Loomer reported that an unnamed Florida lawmaker described Nixon "visibly picking her nose with her finger one day inside the Florida Capitol," adding: "When she was picking her nose, it started to bleed."
Ocasio-Cortez has had her own share of embarrassing public moments. Linking arms with Nixon in Florida adds another entry to that list.
When a party's best-known progressive star flies to a state with a 1.5-million-voter Republican advantage to campaign for a candidate who won't pay her own taxes, the problem is not messaging. The problem is the product.
