Fact Check: Where Nixon and Moody stand on U.S. Cuba policy

Elections admin October 10, 2026 0 Comments

Fact Check: Where Nixon and Moody stand on U.S. Cuba policy

The vast majority of Cubans in South Florida hold the communist Cuban government responsible for the harsh living conditions on the island. But almost half of younger Cubans say the U.S. deserves equal blame for Cuba’s humanitarian crisis, according to a Miami Herald poll this year.

Florida’s next senator will likely play a key role in determining the future of the U.S.-Cuba relationship. Whoever wins November’s Senate race will serve out the final two years of the six-year term won in 2022 by Marco Rubio, a Cuba hardliner who vacated his Senate seat to serve as U.S. Secretary of State.

Republican Ashley Moody has supported a maximum-pressure approach — even as living conditions have quickly deteriorated on the island this year — as a way to force the communist government to implement political and economic changes.

Democrat Angie Nixon sees the recent uptick in U.S. sanctions against Cuba as a doubling-down on a failed policy that’s hurting Cuban people more than the government. She’d like to see a return to the thawing of relations that began under Barack Obama.

Issue: U.S. policy toward Cuba

Ashley Moody, Republican nominee

Since her nomination to the Senate last year, Moody has advocated for even stricter sanctions against Cuba and supported President Donald Trump’s policies restricting oil shipments to the island.

She joined Department of Justice attorneys at the Freedom Tower in Miami in May to read out the criminal charges against Raúl Castro for his role in the 1996 shoot down of Brothers to the Rescue planes.

“Previous administrations coddled the Communist Cuban regime,” Moody said on social media this summer. “With President Trump and Secretary Rubio at the helm, we indicted Raúl Castro and we’re holding their regime accountable.”

She has also frequently pointed to the failures of Cuba’s government as an example for why voters should reject progressive candidates who’ve aligned themselves with the Democratic Socialists of America.

Angie Nixon, Democratic nominee

Nixon has spent most of her time on the campaign trail talking about Florida’s residents, and less on foreign policy. But her campaign said she is advocating for pathways to residency for Cuban immigrants in the United States “left vulnerable to deportation.”

Her campaign said Nixon would also like to see “aggressive diplomacy as the primary tool for political pressure — an Obama-style approach.”

She told FOX13 Tampa Bay this summer that she’s open to lifting the longstanding U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, arguing that “the Cuban people are suffering — the government is not,” according to her campaign.

She has pushed back against Moody’s arguments that Nixon’s membership in the Democratic Socialists of America puts her in the same camp as Cuban communists.

“While Sen. Moody has spent the campaign claiming Angie wants the U.S. to look like Cuba, Angie’s actual policy is focused on helping Cuban people, rather than relying on failed, decades-old isolationist strategies,” Nixon’s campaign wrote in a statement.

This story was originally published October 8, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline “Fact Check: Where Nixon and Moody stand on U.S. Cuba policy.”