Florida Man Loses. Florida Woman Wins.

Florida, that perpetual source of meme-worthy headlines and deep political disappointment for Democrats, held primary elections for both parties last night. The results were, frankly, a bit confusing. Democrats rejected an establishment-backed Senate contender in favor of a progressive—and simultaneously picked a former Republican to be their champion in the governor’s race. Republicans, meanwhile, voted down a string of ultra-extreme candidates in favor of candidates who are merely extreme. Let’s make sense of a head-spinning night.

We’ve heard a lot about Democrats’ tug-of-war between the party’s centrist and progressive wings. Did either one win yesterday?

Yes—they both did. Progressives scored their most impressive win of the night in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. Angie Nixon, a state representative who joined the Democratic Socialists of America this year, beat Alex Vindman, an Army veteran who testified during Donald Trump’s first impeachment hearing. Despite a 16-to-1 fundraising advantage and support from prominent senators, Vindman lost by 12 points. Nixon, a union organizer who supports Medicare for All, will face Republican Sen. Ashley Moody, who was appointed to the seat last year, in November.

It was. But as with earlier Democratic primaries , Nixon’s win wasn’t a knockout blow in the party’s insider–outsider civil war. For one thing, Vindman moved to Florida just three years ago. For another, establishment candidates elsewhere in Florida easily fended off lefty rivals last night. Democrats’ nominee for governor, David Jolly, is so moderate that he wasn’t even a Democrat until last year. (He left the GOP in 2018, after criticizing Trump.) Meanwhile, Reps. Jared Moskowitz, a pro-Israel Democrat, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman, both beat democratic socialists in U.S. House primaries. So, as we wrote last week , the struggle for the party’s future seems set to continue.

You can squint at last night’s results and wonder if Trump is losing his grip over the GOP electorate. Rep. Cory Mills, whom Trump endorsed even though the House Ethics Committee is investigating him for alleged sexual misconduct, lost his primary. (Trump, as is his wont, claimed today that he’d actually advised Mills “ to get out of the Race, but he wouldn’t listen ” and promptly endorsed the former TV anchor who beat him.) On the other side of the state, a former Trump official named Catalina Lauf also lost her bid for Congress despite the president’s endorsement. Rep. Byron Donalds, the president’s preferred nominee for governor, did win his primary, but with less than 50 percent of the vote. In some ways, these results fit a pattern. Other scandal-ridden Republicans and Trump-backed gubernatorial candidates have also struggled in or lost primaries this year, even in deep-red states.

In a few notable races, Florida Republicans seemed to have lost their appetite for the far right. James Fishback, an alt-right, antisemitic troll whose gubernatorial campaign got oodles of national media attention, finished a dismal third.