The Bradenton Times was the only newspaper in Florida to endorse Nixon in the primaries. Editor Mitch Maley interviews her at WSLR.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: September 3 2026
Host: The Bradenton Times was the only newspaper in Florida to endorse Angie Nixon in the primary elections. So it did not come as a surprise that the U.S. Senate candidate granted an interview to Bradenton Times Editor Mitch Maley during a campaign stop in Sarasota yesterday. Here are a few highlights of the interview Maley and Nixon conducted at WSLR.
Johannes Werner: The orthodox view of Democratic leaders in Florida holds that the party must field middle-of-the-road candidates that appeal to independent voters. The party’s most recent and current candidates for governor, for that matter, are former Republicans. But the last one—Charlie Crist—lost badly.
Angie Nixon takes a different approach. She focuses on the needs of working families and tries to appeal to disillusioned people who do not always vote. Here’s how she describes what she hopes is a winning strategy:
Angie Nixon: I call those people “high potential voters”—not “low propensity” but “high potential”—who are just frustrated and tired, but they will vote for someone who puts them first. They will vote for someone who goes and talks to them—who sees them—who wants them to help lead and create the platform that would benefit them. That’s what we have to do. That’s what I’m doing.
JW: “Hope” and keeping up the fight are keywords for Nixon.
AN: What I’m hearing from voters that’s getting me fired up is that they’re getting hope. They’re feeling hopeful again, which makes me feel good. I feed off of that. It’s so frustrating to know that so many people didn’t have any hope. They just kind-of gave up. But I can’t give up hope because I come from enslaved people who faced even worse things than I did. I’m a living, breathing testament that, when you cling to hope even in your darkest moments, you can accomplish anything. I’m literally my ancestors’ wildest dreams. I want people to know that times get hard, but we have to keep going.
JW: She gained fame recently as a state legislator pushing back against the Republican supermajority’s redistricting. She picked up a pink bullhorn on the House floor, and she participated in a sit-in in front of the governor’s office, which got her arrested and a court hearing, coming up soon.
Other than calling her a Communist, her opponent and Political Action Committees have, so far, only produced four traffic citations.
AN: Going in my files, they found out that I was not the best driver when I was younger.
Mitch Maley: I saw that! I was going to show you this—
AN: Yeah. “Fast and Furious.” That is literally a FOX News headline. “Angie Nixon is a bad driver.” Like, I live in Florida.
MM: We’ve all been on I-95—
AN: Here, we all drive bad! But I’m happy that I didn’t really hurt anyone. I was younger, and now I drive more safely, y’all.
MM: And that’s all they’ve got.
AN: Right.
JW: A key part of her platform is universal healthcare. But she says she is open to what shape this could take.
AN: It needs to be universal healthcare, Medicare for All, but we can actually create it the way in which we need to create it. There’s nothing set in stone right now. Yale just released a study that said we would save $1 trillion annually and save over 111,000 lives each year if we were to pass some type of universal healthcare, so whatever that looks like, I am fully supportive of.
JW: She is also running on subsidized childcare.
AN: I have five kids, and I know how much it is.
MM: Talk about the idea of not just the humanity of it—not even just the home economics, meaning the individual—but that has an economic benefit for a community as well.
AN: Exactly. For every dollar that we spend on universal childcare, it puts $3 back into the economy because it allows parents to be able to get to work, and it also allows children to be diverted from the school-to-prison pipeline because they have a stronger foundation by going to a quality childcare facility. It’s a win-win. We can help work to reduce crime in the long term, and we can also help parents keep food on the table and a roof over their heads so they don’t have to worry about being a part of the system. It just makes so much sense.
JW: For WSLR News, Johannes Werner.
For the full interview, go to thebradentontimes.com/stories/bonus-podcast-us-senate-candidate-angie-nixon,211136 or wslr.org.
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