Florida AG Ashley Moody picked for Rubio's Senate seat

Mary Ellen McIntire, CQ-Roll Call on Jan 16, 2025

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WASHINGTON — Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody will become the second woman to represent the Sunshine State in the Senate, after Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday he would appoint her to succeed Republican Marco Rubio, who is expected to be confirmed as secretary of State.

“I will bring the same persistence and passion and tenacity as a United States senator that I have brought as Florida’s attorney general,” Moody said at a news conference alongside DeSantis in Orlando.

She recalled earlier conversations with DeSantis, a former House member, who questioned “why anybody would want that job,” and Moody said she had been inclined to agree.

“There’s a lot of deadlock in Washington,” she said. “And then I thought more about that, and I thought if every person with the same energy, the same love, the respect for our founding principles, the ideals on which this country was built on, if every person like that, with that personality said, ‘I don’t think I’d like serving in Congress,’ then we’d never change that culture”

“I probably won’t like it,” she added. “But I’m ready to show up and fight for this nation and fight for President Donald Trump to deliver the ‘America First’ agenda on Day One.”

Florida will hold a special election in 2026 for the final two years of Rubio’s term – and while Moody could run to keep the seat, it appears she could have at least one Republican challenger.

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, called Moody a “proven conservative fighter.”

“As Attorney General, she has been a national leader on border security, a champion of safe streets, and an unyielding defender of the rights of Floridians,” Scott said in a statement. “As a mom of two, she understands the importance of our Republican Majority’s mission to deliver generational opportunities for families.”

Moody, 49, will join a small group of sitting senators with school-age children, noting Thursday that her youngest child is still in school.

A close DeSantis ally, Moody had reportedly emerged as the front-runner to succeed Rubio in recent weeks. Her appointment gives Florida its second female senator after Republican Paula Hawkins, who was elected to a single term in the 1980s.

Moody is currently in her second term as Florida’s attorney general. She was first elected in 2018, succeeding Republican Pam Bondi, Donald Trump’s choice for attorney general in his incoming administration. Moody won reelection four years later by a commanding 21 points in what is fast becoming a safely red state.

Prior to seeking political office, Moody served as a federal prosecutor and as a Hillsborough County circuit judge for 10 years, first winning the position in 2006 at age 31. Judicial service runs in her family, The Washington Post reported. Her father, James S. Moody Jr., was nominated to the federal district bench by President Bill Clinton. Her brother, James S. Moody III, is a DeSantis appointee to the Hillsborough County circuit court.

As state attorney general, Ashley Moody signed on to a lawsuit from her Texas counterpart, Republican Ken Paxton, that sought to block the results of the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden. She also joined Paxton and several other state attorneys general in a lawsuit challenging the 2010 health care law, known as the Affordable Care Act.

She also led an investigation into the second assassination attempt of Trump last year.

Last year, she teamed up with Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., to investigate the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which hit Florida and other southern states. Moody filed a lawsuit accusing agency officials of instructing workers to ignore homes that appeared to support Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

“When we heard reports of FEMA skipping houses in Florida that had Trump signs and flags, we took quick legal action to hold FEMA accountable,” Moody said in November. “Withholding disaster relief aid for any American on the basis of political affiliation is reprehensible.”

FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell called the actions to skip over Trump-supporting households “reprehensible” and the FEMA official alleged to have given the direction was fired.

Moody could face some intraparty competition should she decide to run in the 2026 special election to complete Rubio’s term. Republican Rep. Cory Mills has suggested he is likely to run for the seat.

“You can probably guarantee my hat is going to be thrown in the ring for 2026,” Mills recently told reporters, according to Politico.

Some senators had pushed for DeSantis to pick Lara Trump, a former Republican National Committee co-chair and the president-elect’s daughter-in-law, to fill the seat. But she took herself out of consideration for the role in December.