Army veteran Alex Vindman, a key witness during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2019, is running for the Senate in Florida as a Democrat.
Vindman, who launched his campaign Tuesday, touted his role in Trump’s impeachment as he announced his campaign, showing clips of his testimony in his launch video.
“The last time you saw me was here, swearing an oath to tell the truth about a president who broke his,” Vindman says in the video. “See, my family came here as refugees to escape tyranny, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to bow down to some wannabe tyrant.”
Democrats face a tough battle to make statewide elections competitive in Florida, which has rapidly shifted toward Republicans in recent years. Democrats have not won a Senate race there since Bill Nelson won re-election in 2012.
Trump won Florida by 13 points in 2024, and Marco Rubio won re-election in 2022 by 16 points, winning nearly 58% of the vote.
Vindman, a retired lieutenant colonel and Iraq War veteran, testified in 2019 that, while he was serving on the National Security Council, he witnessed Trump trying to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden and his son, as well as the 2016 election, on a call between the two leaders.
Vindman, who was born in Ukraine, later retired from the Army, alleging that Trump blocked his promotion. Vindman and his twin brother, Eugene, who won a Northern Virginia congressional district in 2024, were removed from their posts at the National Security Council after Trump’s impeachment trial.
“This president unleashed a reign of terror and retribution not just against me and my family, but against all of us,” Vindman said in launching his Senate campaign.
“Today, our country is in chaos. Thug militias attacking citizens. Tariffs pushing prices sky-high. Health care premiums through the roof,” Vindman said in the video, which features imagery of federal agents killing two people in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Vindman is running to take on GOP Sen. Ashley Moody, the former state attorney general who was appointed to the Senate after Rubio became Trump’s secretary of state. The special election in November will determine who will serve the final two years of Rubio’s term.
Vindman slammed Moody in his launch video, saying: “They put Moody in the Senate to be a ‘yes’ vote for Trump and the billionaires. She’s not Florida’s senator. She’s theirs.”
The crowded Democratic primary on Aug. 18 features several candidates, including Jennifer Jenkins, who defeated a future leader of the conservative group Moms for Liberty in a Brevard County school board race; Hector Mujica, who worked for Google's philanthropy group; and state Rep. Angie Nixon.
