Senator Ashley Moody’s lack of accountability in the Hope Florida debacle shows we can’t afford for this unelected senator to represent us any longer.
Fortunately, the top of the Democratic ticket shows real leadership: David Jolly, who as governor would reopen the Hope Florida investigation, and Angie Nixon, who is running to unseat Moody.
Hope Florida’s Tainted History
Founded in 2021 by Governor Ron DeSantis’s wife, Hope Florida claimed to help vulnerable Floridians connect with charities that could get them off government assistance and attain long-term goals for supporting themselves. But the organization has been shrouded in secrecy.
As reported by the Tampa Bay Times, Hope Florida received over a quarter of a million dollars in its first year of operation—mostly from corporations regulated by the State of Florida or seeking to do business with it.
And according to the testimony of Hope Florida’s own chairperson, the organization broke state laws, did not file tax returns, and disregarded its own bylaws.
These are all major ethical red flags. Anyone with a job, anyone who has ever run a business, or anyone responsible for a household knows there are rules to abide by, tax codes to follow, and stakeholders to answer to.
Hope Florida was run as though it was above these basic principles of accountability.
Then came Amendment 3 and the DeSantises’ opposition to recreational marijuana use.
In 2024, Florida voters got to decide whether to make marijuana use legal under state law. With a majority voting in favor but not the required 60% supermajority, Amendment 3 did not become law.
This was a decision for the voters to make. But Ron DeSantis spent millions of Florida taxpayers’ money to publicly oppose Amendment 3.
And Hope Florida funneled ten million taxpayer dollars to dark money groups to oppose the amendment.
A lot of Floridians have wondered how Hope Florida got that ten million dollars of our money in the first place.
Thanks to a grand jury report leaked to CBS News, we’ve found out.
Grand Jury Calls Out Moody
According to the report, that money was part of a settlement between Centene and the State of Florida. Centene, a Medicaid provider, overbilled the state, and the settlement required it to pay Florida $67 million.
Other states have conducted similar settlements with Centene. They’ve collected the money owed to their taxpayers and moved on. Under DeSantis, Florida stalled for three years.
Then, less than two months before Amendment 3 would be up for a vote, the State of Florida suddenly changed its tune and insisted that Centene divert $5 million of the settlement money to Hope Florida. The very next day, the demand was doubled: to $10 million.
But Centene wanted the settlement to include clear language about what they were being ordered to do with the $10 million. This would mean Ashley Moody, then Attorney General of Florida, would need to be on the record as ordering the diversion of the funds.
And, as CBS News puts it, “Moody, however, did not want to be responsible.”
Her chief deputy was the one in charge of signing off on the settlement language. He told her he was concerned that the change would intrude on the power of the Florida Legislature to direct state spending—and that that $10 million “belonged to the State of Florida” and thus should not go to Hope Florida in the first place.
So how did Moody address her chief deputy’s concerns?
And what did the State of Florida and Centene do?
The settlement was changed so someone other than Moody had to sign off on it.
They sidestepped the problem by transferring responsibility for the decision from Ashley Moody to DeSantis’s Agency for Health Care Administration.
And according to CBS News, “the grand jury noted that ‘after consulting AG Moody, she authorized [her chief deputy] to sign the settlement agreement in its final form.’”
As our Attorney General, Moody told her chief deputy to take taxpayer money—money meant for poor children. When he wouldn’t do it, she allowed someone else in the DeSantis administration to take the money—and she looked the other way.
In a society that cares about corruption, a public official’s involvement in a scheme to illegally transfer taxpayer money should end that person’s career. But, after Donald Trump’s second inauguration, then-Senator Marco Rubio became Trump’s Secretary of State. With a Senate seat to fill, DeSantis appointed Ashley Moody.
And now this Attorney General who allowed our money to be taken and funneled into political spending is representing us in the United States Senate.
GOP in Florida Opposes Healthcare Coverage
During her time as our unelected senator, Ashley Moody has received a score of 96% from Heritage Action, a conservative organization connected to the Heritage Foundation. That’s ten percentage points higher than the score they’ve given the average Republican senator.
You remember the Heritage Foundation: the right-wing think tank that’s been around since the seventies, that ushered in the Reagan era—and that is responsible for Project 2025.
Project 2025 calls for adding barriers to Medicaid, making contraceptives more difficult to access, and discouraging childhood vaccinations.
It also seeks to eliminate Head Start, which provides much-needed services for low-income families.
In other words, Moody has a ringing endorsement from those seeking to “dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision.”
And look how Moody has spent her time in office. Last year, she voted for the budget reconciliation bill, a fiasco that is projected to take over a trillion dollars from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program and force ten and a half million people off these programs. Months later, she voted against extending healthcare subsidies even though Florida is the state with the most people who benefit from the subsidies.
Florida is one of a handful of states that have not adopted Medicaid expansion, which allows for adults making 138% of the federal poverty level to access Medicaid.
The pattern is clear: Moody’s reckless disregard of our money, our health, and the ethical standards of public office makes her unfit to continue as our senator.
Vote Moody Out
Do we want Florida to be represented by someone who knew money was going to be taken from sick kids from low-income families—and authorized her chief deputy to sign off on that decision?
Do we want an official who allowed our money to get funneled into political activities?
Do we look at someone who dodges questions about this decision and imagine for a moment that we’re okay with this poor excuse for leadership?
Can we hold our heads high and keep a modicum of self-respect if we look at someone who’s been called out by a grand jury’s report, someone who has voted to decrease our access to healthcare, someone with a 96% favorable rating by the Project 2025 crowd, and say, “I guess I can live with more of that”?
We Floridians have more of a backbone than that.
And Angie Nixon is the antidote to Republicans who use their offices to rubberstamp MAGA’s disdain for our wallets, our health, and our lives.
Nixon has built a platform on affordability and access to medical care. As part of the Working Families Guarantee that Nixon supports, Medicare for All represents the use of taxpayer money for the common good of all Americans.
Put simply, Medicare for All promotes the general welfare and secures us the blessings of liberty. It also respects our unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
America continues to spend more on healthcare and get worse outcomes than similar nations. If other countries can figure out the dollars and cents of healthcare spending, if they can view return on investment as longer lives and better health for their own people, we can certainly do it too.
Angie Nixon knows we can do better than this. And we deserve better than this.
If you’re tired of throwing your money at the tax man and hoping it doesn’t end up in a dark money group, and if you’re tired of your health insurance being about as predictable as gambling at a casino, support Angie Nixon in the Senate race against Moody. Donate to her campaign. Volunteer for her. Tell others what she stands for.
Vote for her.
Kick Corruption Out
Republicans call themselves the party of family—but taking money from poor kids is anti-family.
Republicans call themselves the party of morality—but funneling taxpayers’ money to a political campaign through dark money groups was unethical and corrupt.
Republicans call themselves the party of fiscal responsibility—but when an investigation by the Florida House led to accusations of money laundering and criminal fraud, DeSantis and his administration simply denied it.
There was no commitment to transparency and accountability. Instead, there’s been a lot of stonewalling from DeSantis’s office.
And the people named in the report did not give enough information to the grand jury for them to charge anyone with a crime—even though ten million of our tax dollars were illegally siphoned away from poor children and into an anti-marijuana crusade.
That money didn’t just get up and walk away (and into the coffers of political action committees). Whatever happened to “the buck stops here”?
Americans want our elected officials to investigate corruption, not partake in it.
Americans want our tax dollars to go to We the People, not to some political campaign. Affordability means we can trust that our money will stretch far enough to buy what we need. That includes our tax dollars. That money is meant for our needs, not an anti-marijuana crusade favored by the DeSantis administration.
And we want accountability back. America has been dealing with the fallout of the Epstein files. Florida has been dealing with the fallout of insurance companies’ profiting off Floridians when hurricanes damage and destroy our homes—and having the nerve to claim they were running out of money.
In this time, we need to elect candidates who will stand up for integrity, root out corruption, and use public money on the public’s behalf.
If elected governor, David Jolly has promised to reopen the Hope Florida investigation. When Jolly called on Byron Donalds, the Republican candidate for governor, to make the same promise, Donalds called it politics.
How are we supposed to trust Donalds to lead the State of Florida if he’s so flippant about credible evidence of corruption in Tallahassee?
How are we supposed to think he would be anything other than another out-of-touch Republican who doesn’t understand the struggles to make ends meet if ten million dollars goes missing and he can so easily dismiss it and move on?
If we want to continue to afford life in the Sunshine State, we need to elect candidates who will make “sunshine” mean more than just the weather. We need candidates who know that sunshine is about transparency.
David Jolly knows the right thing to do. It’s not to look at the elected officials that put our money into the wrong hands and say, “Move along, folks, nothing to see here.” Jolly knows Floridians care about fairness, following the rules, and not taking what isn’t yours—especially from those who can least afford that loss.
If you want to see Florida return to sanity, with a governor determined to hold wrongdoers accountable, support David Jolly for governor. Donate your time and money to his campaign. Discuss him with your neighbors, and vote for him.
Floridians deserve better than we’ve gotten from Republican rule. And this November, we can make a change.