Florida Democrat and DSA member Angie Nixon told CNN she wants Republican Sen. Ashley Moody locked up and punished, citing disputed claims over settlement funds that officials reject as false.
Democratic Senate candidate Angie Nixon went on CNN and made plain she wants her Republican opponent behind bars. When host Kasie Hunt pressed her, Nixon did not walk it back.
Nixon, a Democratic Socialists of America member challenging Sen. Ashley Moody in Florida, used the appearance to deny ads that say she wants to abolish prisons. Her reason was blunt: she wants Moody locked up instead. The exchange put a hard edge on a race already thick with accusations over a Medicaid-related settlement and the Hope Florida Foundation.
Nixon’s comments aired Wednesday and quickly drew wider notice. Fox News highlighted the call for Moody to be “locked up” and “punished in jail,” framing the rhetoric as another sign of Democrats losing composure on the trail.
The core dispute centers on an AHCA settlement with Centene Corporation. Nixon claims Moody, while serving as Florida attorney general, helped divert roughly $10 million “from sick kids for the Medicaid program” into what she called political slush funds tied to Gov. Ron DeSantis and efforts against citizen ballot measures, including the 2024 marijuana initiative known as Amendment 3.
On air, Nixon rejected the charge that she wants prisons abolished or police defunded. She flipped the attack into an accusation against Moody.
She told viewers the commercials were spreading “a lot of disinformation and lies.” Then she explained her stance on prisons this way:
“Why would I want to do that when I want her locked up and punished in jail for what she has done?”
Hunt followed up directly: “You want your Republican opponent locked up?” Nixon answered without hesitation. The New York Post recorded her reply and the surrounding Hope Florida claims that have dogged the race.
“Basically, yes. Because of what she did, yes. I absolutely would want that to happen. Yes,” Nixon said.
She piled on sharper language about her opponent. Nixon called Moody “a lying, cheating, thieving, scamming person who basically took $10 million from sick kids for the Medicaid program.” She added that Moody “rerouted that into two political slush funds for Ron DeSantis to defeat two citizen-led ballot initiatives” and “voted to end healthcare for over 440,000 people here in the state of Florida.”
Those figures and the “slush funds” label remain Nixon’s claims. Moody and DeSantis have rejected them in public statements. No charges have been filed. A grand jury report tied to the matter was later expunged, and reporting notes there is not enough evidence for charges as things stand.
Nixon’s DSA membership sits in the background of the prison exchange. The same organization is described as calling to abolish the prison system altogether, even as she insists she needs prisons kept open for her opponent. That tension fits a longer pattern of socialist branding trouble for her campaign, including earlier contradictory statements about her DSA ties.
Moody answered the settlement attacks in an August social media post. She said numerous reports had misrepresented an AHCA agreement that had already been public for two years.
“Understanding this is political season and there may be a tendency to misrepresent the facts, it is important to clarify three points,” Moody wrote. She said the Centene settlement was negotiated by AHCA, the state healthcare agency, and the agreement itself spelled out how money would be dispersed, including funds going to Hope Florida.
Moody stressed that the attorney general’s office was only one of multiple agencies that signed the final agreement for execution and release of claims. She said her office “had no knowledge of how funds would be spent or played any role in how Hope Florida, AHCA, or the legislature would spend the settlement money.”
“Attempts to characterize this any other way are disingenuous,” Moody stated.
DeSantis went further. He said the 1st District Court of Appeal “eviscerated the phony narratives” about AHCA’s pre-suit settlement and the private donation to DCF’s direct support organization, the Hope foundation. He listed three clean denials: no misappropriation, no tax dollars used at all, and no Medicaid money involved with the donation.
Hope Florida is described as a direct support organization for the Department of Children and Families. Nixon continues to treat the money path as proof of corruption. Moody and DeSantis treat it as a settled administrative matter already reviewed and cleared of the worst allegations.
Nixon did not stop at the jail demand. She pointed to the 1st DCA’s handling of the grand jury report and called the episode “corruption through and through.” She noted that a judge on that court had been appointed by DeSantis.
She pledged action if voters send her to Washington.
“And so, I would definitely call for an investigation as a federal lawmaker when I become a U.S. senator to actively go in to see what happened. People are pissed off. We don’t know how many children are potentially going to die because that $10 million did not go to where it was supposed to go to.”
That is a serious charge. It is also one that sits against the official record available so far: the report expunged, no charges, and explicit statements from Moody and DeSantis that the Medicaid-misappropriation story is false. Nixon’s version treats the court action itself as the scandal. The other side treats the court action as the end of a weak narrative.
Voters watching Democratic campaigns this cycle have seen similar internal strain when socialist-aligned candidates set the tone. A former Clinton official has already warned that Democratic Socialists will “destroy” the party unless leaders confront the faction, a caution that tracks with races like this one.
Nixon’s CNN turn also arrived while national Democrats keep struggling to define their economic brand. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has dodged direct answers on socialism even as polling shows many Democrats prefer it to capitalism, leaving the left’s lane wide open for candidates like Nixon.
The practical politics are straightforward. Moody’s side has run ads tying Nixon to abolish-prisons and defund-the-police ideas common on the DSA left. Nixon’s rebuttal was not a moderate pivot. It was an insistence that prisons must remain open so her opponent can occupy one.
Breitbart News captured the full arc of the denial-plus-demand and the underlying fund fight that Nixon keeps elevating.
She also folded in a hit on Moody’s record relative to former President Donald Trump and Medicaid policy in Florida, keeping the healthcare frame alive even as the settlement details remain contested. The race now features one candidate who speaks in the language of prosecution and another who answers with settlement documents, court action, and point-by-point denials.
Public breakdowns and empty chairs have become familiar markers when Democrats face uncomfortable ground. From high-profile arrests to committee walkouts that leave no witnesses, the party keeps supplying fresh examples of disorder, as when members abandoned a Judiciary hearing on women’s sports.
Nixon’s jail talk belongs in that same season of unforced errors. It converts a policy dispute into a personal demand for punishment before any prosecutor has brought a case.
Florida voters already have the competing statements in front of them: Nixon’s $10 million accusation and call for handcuffs, Moody’s insistence that her office did not direct the spending, and DeSantis’s flat rejection of misappropriation, tax-dollar, and Medicaid claims. The grand jury material is gone from public release. Charges are not on the table.
What remains is a Senate hopeful who says the system is corrupt through and through, and who wants her opponent locked inside it.
Campaigns reveal character under pressure. When a candidate’s best defense against a prison-abolition charge is a promise to jail the other side, Floridians can judge the seriousness on offer.