Moody Faces First Voter Test as Florida Senate Special Primary Nears

Florida Republicans and Democrats will pick nominees on Tuesday, August 18, in a U.S. Senate special election that has drawn less attention than the governor's race but carries comparable stakes for the state's representation in Washington. The contest will fill the balance of the six-year term Marco Rubio won in 2022, a seat that became vacant when Rubio was confirmed as Secretary of State in January 2025 and that Gov. Ron DeSantis filled by appointing then-Attorney General Ashley Moody.

Moody has served in the seat since the appointment but has never faced Florida voters as a senator. The August 18 primary is her first, and it is the reason a special election appears on the 2026 calendar at all: an appointee holds the seat only until the next general election, when voters decide who serves out the remainder of the term. The general election is November 3.

Both primaries are closed. Only voters registered with a party may vote in that party's Senate primary, and the ballot sits alongside primaries for governor, Congress, the Legislature, and a range of county and judicial offices. For most Florida voters, the Senate race will be one line on a long ballot.

The Republican field

Moody enters as the clear front-runner. She carries President Donald Trump's endorsement and, according to candidate guides compiled ahead of the primary, backing from a long list of members of Florida's congressional delegation. Before her appointment she served two terms as Florida's attorney general and, prior to that, as a circuit judge in Hillsborough County, giving her a statewide profile built over roughly a decade in office.

Three Republicans are challenging her. Chris Gleason, a U.S. Army veteran and technology consultant, has campaigned as a government and campaign finance whistleblower, describing work on data analysis tools intended to flag unusual patterns in political donations. Neelam Taneja Perry and Ernest "Ernie" Rivera round out the field. None has reported the fundraising or institutional support that would ordinarily be required to seriously threaten an endorsed incumbent in a state this large.

That imbalance matters less for the outcome than for what it reveals about the Republican coalition heading into November. Primary challenges to appointed incumbents often function as protest vehicles, and the share of the vote the challengers collectively draw will be read as a rough measure of how settled Republican voters are behind an appointment they had no say in.

The Democratic contest

Democrats choose between state Rep. Angie Nixon of Jacksonville and Alex Vindman. Nixon has built a legislative profile in Tallahassee as one of the chamber's more outspoken progressive members, with a base in Duval County and Northeast Florida. Vindman entered the race with national name recognition and, according to campaign finance reports, has raised substantially more money than Nixon.

The fundraising gap has shaped the campaign's geography. A better-funded candidate can advertise across Florida's expensive media markets, while a candidate working with less has to rely more heavily on organizing, endorsements, and earned media. In a low-turnout August primary, both approaches can work, which makes the Democratic contest genuinely less predictable than the Republican one.

Whoever wins faces a difficult general election. Florida Republicans have expanded their voter registration advantage over several cycles, and the state's last two Senate races were decided by double digits in the Republicans' favor. Democrats running statewide in Florida have increasingly framed their campaigns around cost-of-living issues, property insurance, and housing rather than national partisan questions, and the primary will indicate which of those messages the party's base prefers.

Why a special election is on the ballot

Under Florida law, when a U.S. Senate seat becomes vacant, the governor appoints a replacement who serves until the next general election. That appointee must then win a special election to serve the remainder of the original term. Because Rubio's 2022 term runs through January 2029, the winner in November 2026 will serve roughly two years before the seat comes up again on the regular cycle.

The practical consequence is that Florida voters will decide this seat twice in short order: once this November for the balance of the term, and again in 2028 for a full six years. Candidates and donors on both sides are aware of that timeline, which raises the value of winning in 2026 as a springboard rather than treating it as a short-term placeholder.

It also means the seat's occupant will be building seniority and committee assignments on a compressed clock. Florida's other senator, Rick Scott, has held his seat since 2019. The state's influence in the chamber depends in part on continuity, which is one argument incumbents in special elections routinely make to primary voters.

What the seat controls for Florida

Florida's senators sit at the center of several issues with direct household consequences. Federal disaster policy is one. FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund has been operating under spending restrictions this year, and proposals circulating in Washington would tighten the standards states must meet to qualify for federal recovery money after a storm. No state has more exposure to that question than Florida.

Immigration is another. Florida has entered more 287(g) agreements between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities than any other state, and the framework governing those partnerships is set in Washington. So is the policy environment for the cruise industry, which operates its largest hub at PortMiami and moves millions of passengers annually through Port Canaveral and Port Everglades.

Senators also vote on judicial nominations, including for the U.S. District Courts for the Southern, Middle, and Northern Districts of Florida and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears appeals from Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. Those courts have handled some of the most consequential litigation over Florida policy in recent years, from immigration detention to environmental review.

What voters should know before Tuesday

Party affiliation determines which ballot a voter receives, and Florida's deadline to change party registration ahead of a primary has passed. Voters registered with no party affiliation will receive a ballot containing only nonpartisan contests, which in many counties still includes judicial races, school board seats, and local referenda that are decided in August.

Vote-by-mail ballots must be received by the county supervisor of elections by 7 p.m. on election day. Ballots postmarked but not delivered by that deadline are not counted. Voters who requested a mail ballot but have not returned it can still vote in person, and county elections offices can explain the process for surrendering an unreturned mail ballot at a polling place.

Early voting schedules vary by county. Florida law sets a mandatory window and allows supervisors to extend it, so hours and site counts differ substantially between, for example, Miami-Dade and a rural Panhandle county. Voters should confirm details with their county supervisor rather than assuming a statewide schedule.

How appointed senators have fared

Senate appointments are relatively common in American politics, and the historical record on how appointees perform when they finally face voters is mixed. Appointees who arrive with existing statewide profiles generally hold their seats. Those without one frequently struggle, because a Senate appointment confers the office without conferring the political base that ordinarily comes with winning it.

Moody falls into the first category. She won two statewide elections as attorney general before the appointment, which means Florida Republicans have voted for her twice already and are familiar with her name and record. That is a materially different starting position than an appointee drawn from private life or from a single congressional district.

The appointment itself has drawn attention because of how the seat became vacant. Rubio's confirmation as Secretary of State created an opening that DeSantis filled at his discretion, and the choice was watched as a signal of the governor's own political calculations at a moment when he was in the final phase of his second term.

What the campaign has been about

The Republican primary has been conducted largely on national themes, with the candidates competing over alignment with the current administration rather than over distinctly Florida questions. That is typical of Senate primaries, where the office's federal character pulls debate toward Washington rather than Tallahassee.

The Democratic primary has run differently. Nixon has campaigned on the record she built in the Florida House, particularly on health care access and housing costs, while Vindman has run a campaign built around national security credentials and institutional accountability. The two represent genuinely different theories about what makes a Democrat competitive in Florida.

Neither primary has produced sustained debate over the issues that most directly affect Florida households, including property insurance costs, condominium assessments, and the state's exposure to changes in federal disaster policy. That gap between what campaigns discuss and what voters experience is a recurring feature of federal races in the state.

Turnout is the variable

Florida's August primaries draw a fraction of the general election electorate, and that gap is the single most important dynamic in both parties' contests. Primary electorates skew older, more consistently partisan, and more likely to vote by mail than the November electorate does.

Vote-by-mail has become a substantial share of Florida primary participation, though the composition changed after the Legislature required voters to renew mail ballot requests more frequently. Voters who had standing requests under the prior rules were required to renew, and campaigns have spent considerable resources ensuring supporters completed that step.

Early voting provides the second channel. Florida law sets a mandatory early voting window and permits county supervisors to extend it, which means the number of days and sites varies substantially between a large urban county and a small rural one.

Election day itself accounts for a shrinking share of Florida votes. Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. local time, and voters in line at closing are entitled to vote. Counties in the Central Time Zone in the western Panhandle close an hour after the rest of the state, which is why statewide results are not final until after 8 p.m. Eastern.

What's next

Polls close at 7 p.m. local time, with Central Time counties in the western Panhandle reporting an hour later than the rest of the state. Because the Republican primary features an endorsed incumbent against underfunded challengers, that race is likely to resolve quickly. The Democratic contest may take longer if the margin is narrow.

The winners move into a general election campaign that will run concurrently with the governor's race and a rewritten constitutional amendment on property taxes, giving Florida an unusually dense November ballot. Turnout in that environment tends to be driven by the top of the ticket, which means the Senate special election will be shaped substantially by how the gubernatorial race develops over the fall.

The Florida Press will report primary results and follow the general election campaign as it develops across Florida's regions.