OPINION | Moody blues: Debate dodge does voters grave disservice

Time was when major party candidates debated the issues, allowing voters to weigh their relative merits and perhaps change their minds before election.

That time appears to be over if Florida’s Senate race is any indication, given that debate talks with Action News Jax and the University of North Florida have stalled out between Democratic challenger Angie Nixon and Republican incumbent Ashley Moody.

Campaigns often try to make news after Labor Day, which begins the real narrative meat of the campaign. Moody, who was never elected to the Senate, made news by telling voters she wouldn’t bother to appear in front of the state as a candidate.

“I’m running against someone who is truly anti-American and is a Democrat Socialist. And as I’ve seen what she says when she takes the stage, which is quote the Communist Manifesto, and quote cop killers, as the wife of a law enforcement officer and someone who has in many roles as a judge and prosecutor defended our Constitution and fought against big government, I’m not going to give a stage or any attention to that,” Moody said, according to Action News Jax.

It’s like the fighter winning on points who doesn’t want to throw a knockout blow. But it raises the question of why the reluctance. 

If Ashley Moody believed what she was campaigning on — a stalwart defense of the American system, etc. – then such a debate would be a slam dunk. An “anti-American” Commie quoting “cop killers” would be the ideal foil. Especially given her own ties to law enforcement. 

Moody may say she fights big government. But in every role, she has been an avatar of governmental power: to punish, to avenge, to make a point, to teach a lesson, to leverage institutional authority. That ultimately is the rule of law, the social contract with an iron fist in the velvet glove. 

The real reason Moody won’t debate is more telling: It could hurt her and it might not help her.

She doesn’t need earned media, beyond that which she gets from right wing television and local “senator files a bill/says a thing” TV segments.

Her cash advantage over Nixon is profound and is set to expand in terms of hard and soft money and outside help of all kinds. 

It was telling that she didn’t go to Trump’s Midterm Convention last week. 

That event was thought to be to showcase MAGA types in close races. No one in the political establishment believes this is one of them. 

POTUS did mention Nixon from the stage in his speech Wednesday night though, spotlighting her “communism,” so there was that.

With that in mind, the calculated decision was made not to give Nixon any oxygen or visibility.

Nixon is well-known in Jacksonville, as evidenced by her getting roughly 80% of Duval Democrats’ August votes. But she is not as well-known statewide, and she is being defined, not just by Republicans and their agitprop media, but by the white center-left on cable news interviews as somewhere to the left of Chairman Mao. 

To that end, much has been made of Nixon’s pre-primary embrace of the Democratic Socialists of America, and it’s been exaggerated. She was trying to signal to young voters that they had a choice on the ballot against new Florida resident and resistance hero Lt. Col. Alex Vindman. It provided a boost in August. She says she wasn’t signing on to all the terms of the contract and disagrees with them on various issues. But the die is cast. 

Whether she needed to do that to win the nomination is unknown, given that there were no debates ahead of the Senate primary and no polling of the primary field. There were people who prewrote “Vindman wins” stories who had to do hasty rewrites when the results rolled in last month. But it was clear Nixon, like Andrew Gillum in 2018, believed she needed some organization to vouch for her, and some packaged ideology to adopt, because it was clear that being Angie wasn’t seen as being enough down the stretch. 

Another reason for Moody not to debate is that her surrogates are attacking Nixon more vehemently than she would be able to in a debate.

Moody is being careful to let others, such as Laura Loomer and the Fox News opinionators, pick up the dog whistle for her. Lots has been said that I won’t quote here, but suffice it to say they are deeply personal attacks that don’t seem necessary against a candidate who allegedly is so ideologically flawed that she can’t be debated.

Moody has rooted her own rhetorical rips of Nixon in matters of ideology and has blended them with positive, issue-driven messaging. It’s been deliberately dull and bland. She was never elected, but she is an incumbent, and won twice statewide as attorney general.

Speaking of her run as attorney general, the Hope Florida Foundation scandal has been festering in the background, but the leak of the grand jury report that saw Moody playing a role in the settlement that took $10M in Medicaid money and gave it to political consultants probably should have been held off for October if they wanted it to matter to voters. 

By the time ballots are cast, it will have been digested and diffused as an issue, and Moody will never get a remotely tough series of questions on the subject.

Especially if Moody never has to debate her opponent about it.