Senator Ashley Moody, a Republican, took the microphone at a campaign event in South Florida on Thursday night and urged her supporters to vote by Tuesday so that “socialism — communism — will never get a foothold in this nation.”
It’s that time of year in Miami politics.
In television ads, in mailed fliers, everywhere voters look: “THE COMMUNISTS ARE COMING,” as Ms. Moody wrote on X on Thursday. She was referring to the progressive canvassers coming to Florida from New York to get out the vote for State Representative Angie Nixon, the Democratic Senate nominee.
Perhaps nowhere is the Republicans’ anti-socialism message more ubiquitous than in South Florida, where fears about encroaching left-wing ideology still resonate among a large Cuban American population that has long leaned Republican. The party has also made inroads with Hispanics who have fled authoritarian governments in countries like Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Florida Republicans’ main target this election cycle has been Ms. Nixon, who joined the Democratic Socialists of America this year. She describes herself as a progressive, not a socialist, and has split from the D.S.A. on a number of issues.
This week, Ms. Nixon faced backlash over how she answered a question from CBS News over whether Cuba is a dictatorship. “That is what people have told me,” she said. “I have never been to Cuba, and so I will have to take their word for it.”
Ms. Nixon had said before — and has said since — that Cuba is a dictatorship. And she has campaigned on top issues for many Hispanic voters in Florida, including the high cost of living and the record number of deportations of Cubans under the Trump administration. But her answer to CBS still gave Republicans campaign fodder in the waning days of the race.
“Do you think she doesn’t want to admit or acknowledge that, in fact, she’s a pawn for communists and dictatorship?” Ms. Moody said on Thursday in Hialeah, a heavily Cuban American and Republican city near Miami.
Ms. Moody holds a moderate lead over Ms. Nixon, according to New York Times/Siena polls released this week. Representative Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor, leads David Jolly, the Democratic nominee, by a slimmer margin, the polls showed.
Four years ago, when he was still in the Senate, Marco Rubio and a huge contingent of Florida Republicans, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, gathered at the same venue the day before the 2022 midterms. They knew Republicans were about to have a big night and went to Hialeah to juice turnout. Their supporters came out in droves, cheering with excitement over what was surely to come.
Mr. DeSantis won re-election that year by 19 percentage points, Mr. Rubio by 16 percentage points, and Miami-Dade County flipped red. (President Trump then won it in 2024, becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to win the county since 1988.)
Thursday’s event was not as crowded or as jubilant as that 2022 rally, with Republicans expecting Florida to not look as solidly Republican as it has in recent elections. A mostly older crowd sat in folding chairs and periodically burst into chants of “U.S.A.!”
Some Republicans are privately worried about whether they will be able to hold onto Miami-Dade County, the largest in the state. Having a red Miami-Dade has become a point of pride for the party in Mr. Trump’s adopted home state.
Democrats have often dismissed being denounced as “socialists,” including in 2018, when Mr. DeSantis narrowly defeated Andrew Gillum, a Democrat. Mr. Gillum wrote after his loss that he and other Democrats should have fought back against the socialist label.
On Thursday, Máximo Álvarez, a Cuban American businessman and longtime Republican donor, told attendees at the Hialeah event that they could not rest in the final days of the campaign.
“We cannot take for granted,” he said, “that Florida is a red state.”
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