At a Republican midterm rally in the Sun 'n Fun hangar at Lakeland Linder International Airport in Florida on Thursday, October 1, 2026, Vice President JD Vance told the crowd that Angie Nixon, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, should leave the country. “Ladies and gentlemen, 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 if those are your views,'” Vance said, according to the Washington Examiner. C-SPAN, which aired the clip, and WESH reported the same words.
Nixon, a Jacksonville state representative, is running against Sen. Ashley Moody, whom Vance was in Florida to support along with gubernatorial nominee Rep. Byron Donalds. The Florida Phoenix reported that Nixon joined the Democratic Socialists of America this summer. Vance also mocked her Cafe Resistance bookstore in Jacksonville and said, “If we tell the truth about Angie Nixon, the people of Florida are going to kick her to the curb and send Ashley Moody to Washington.” When a protester was removed, Vance called him “a Democrat plant.”
Nixon, who the Orlando Sentinel noted is African American and a Jacksonville native, responded on social media: “The most ordinary man imaginable came to my home state to tell me to 'get out of America' while he & Absent Ashley enjoyed the comfort of buildings my ancestors helped build.” She told WESH that Republicans were trying “to demonize me and tell me I need to leave the country, the very country that I was born and raised in.” Moody, who has declined to debate Nixon, frames the race as a choice between socialism and freedom.