A well-known nemesis of Donald Trump is seizing on the president's birthday.
Alex Vindman is trying to give Trump a birthday he won't enjoy.
As the president marked his 80th on Sunday, the retired Army lieutenant colonel and key witness in Trump's first impeachment blasted out a fundraising appeal billing himself as the president's "worst nightmare" and urging supporters to help "make it backfire in the best way possible."
The pitch leaned hard on Vindman's history with Trump. "Nothing would make Trump angrier," the email from the Alex Vindman Victory Fund argued, than being represented by Vindman in the U.S. Senate "holding him accountable."
That framing draws on a well-known backstory. Vindman, a 21-year combat veteran who was wounded in Iraq and awarded a Purple Heart, was serving on the National Security Council in 2019 when he testified that he heard Trump pressure Ukraine's president — testimony that helped trigger Trump's first impeachment. He and his twin brother, Eugene, now a Virginia congressman, were pushed out of their NSC posts after the trial.
Now Vindman is running as a Democrat for Florida's U.S. Senate seat, challenging Republican Sen. Ashley Moody — the former state attorney general whom Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed to fill Marco Rubio's seat after Rubio became secretary of state. Moody, who carries Trump's endorsement, faces voters for the seat for the first time in November's special election.
To argue the long-shot race is winnable, the email pointed to a new poll showing the contest essentially tied: Moody 43 percent, Vindman 42 percent.
That number comes with heavy caveats. It echoes a string of Vindman campaign-cited polls that have kept the race within the margin of error — but independent surveys have been far kinder to Moody, including an Emerson College poll putting her up 8 points and a University of North Florida poll showing a 7-point lead. Florida has trended firmly Republican; no Democrat has won a Senate race there since 2012, the GOP holds a voter-registration edge of roughly 1.4 million, and the Cook Political Report rates the seat "Solid R."
Vindman also has to clear an Aug. 18 Democratic primary first, where state Rep. Angie Nixon is among those running.
Still, his campaign is betting that nationalizing the contest — and lashing it directly to Trump — can fire up donors in a race Democrats would love to steal. As Vindman put it when he launched his bid, the last time many Americans saw him, he was "swearing an oath to tell the truth about a president who broke his."