By Andrew Pantazi | www.jaxtrib.org/author/apantazi/ | Florida State Rep. Angie Nixon, one of the loudest elected officials protesting Gov. Ron DeSantis, blew out former Jacksonville City Councilwoman Brenda Priestly Jackson.
The massive House District 13 victory all but guarantees Nixon another two-year term in office. She faces a nominal write-in challenge in November.
Nixon, a former union organizer, has made a name for herself as a vocal opponent of DeSantis’ and the Republican leadership in Tallahassee.
Priestly Jackson argued Jacksonville needed a more conciliatory approach.
Democratic voters rejected that message, and Nixon won with an enormous margin, earning 81% of the vote to Priestly Jackson’s meager 19%.
She also developed a reputation for voting independently of both parties more often than any other legislator, breaking from bipartisan majorities 64 times in the 2023-2024 legislative sessions – more than any other legislator, according to a Tributary analysis.
She also introduced a resolution in November 2023 calling for “de-escalation and a ceasefire” in Israel and Gaza and vowing to “combat racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and ethnonationalism in all forms.” That resolution earned her the scorn of members of her own party, and only Nixon and one other member voted for it.
Priestly Jackson, Nixon’s primary challenger, brought political experience to the race. She served one term on the Jacksonville City Council and previously spent eight years on the Duval County School Board. In 2012, she narrowly lost a bid for Duval County Clerk of Courts, coming within 1.6 percentage points of victory.
The primary contest was characterized by long-standing tensions between the two candidates, dating back to disputes over racial gerrymandering in the Jacksonville City Council districts. Priestly Jackson had supported a redistricting plan that was later struck down in federal court, with U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard citing Priestly Jackson’s tweets attacking Nixon in her ruling against the map.
During that dispute, Priestly Jackson criticized The Tributary, which had revealed the gerrymandering. She also fought with the Jacksonville Branch of the NAACP and the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville.
Source: www.jaxtrib.org/author/apantazi/
Andrew Pantazi edits and reports for The Tributary. He previously worked as a reporter at The Florida Times-Union where he helped organize the newsroom’s union with the NewsGuild-CWA. He is a Jacksonville native and raising his two sons in the city. You can contact him at Andrew.Pantazi@JaxTrib.org.
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