JD Vance's insult to Black candidate sparks fierce response: 'I don't need his permission'

Florida Senate candidate Angie Nixon is fundraising off Vice President JD Vance’s attack on her, and she isn’t backing down.

“The Vice President of the United States flew into Florida and told a cheering crowd that I don’t belong in America,” Nixon, the Democratic nominee, wrote in a fundraising email on Friday. “I don’t need JD Vance’s permission to belong here.”

Vance went after Nixon at a campaign stop in Lakeland on Oct. 1. He said she “doesn’t belong in America,” the Florida Phoenix reported. C-SPAN’s clip of the remarks shows Vance telling Nixon to “get the hell out” of the country if she’s a socialist.

Nixon, who is Black, said her family has been in Florida for generations.

“We built this country. We bled for it,” she wrote. “We worked the land, raised the children, and did the jobs nobody else wanted to do, all while being told at every turn that we didn’t quite belong.”

She also hit Vance for “lecturing me about America while standing next to a senator who was never even elected to the seat she holds.” That appeared to be a reference to Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.), who was appointed in 2025 to fill Marco Rubio’s seat.

Nixon called Vance’s attack “a distraction, and a desperate one” from rising insurance premiums, rent and health care costs.

“This is my home,” she wrote. “I’m not going anywhere.”