6 hours ago
Alex Vindman is not a man to hold a grudge. Ask him about the bullying, intimidation and retribution meted out by Donald Trump and Maga acolytes following his appearance as a key witness in the first of the president’s two first-term impeachments, and he almost shrugs it off.
“For people that know anything about me, I basically smile all the time,” he says.
“I’m an optimist by nature. I’m more focused on the future than the past, and this idea of vindictiveness or grievance is completely opposite of my personality. Now, accountability is essential … ”
Vindman was speaking about his renewed sense of purpose in a candid interview with the Guardian several weeks after launching his campaign for the Democratic nomination for Florida’s seat in the US Senate in November’s midterms.
He knows it’s an uphill battle in a state whose most recent Democrat in the chamber, Bill Nelson, was elected in 2012; and where the party’s last member to win a statewide election, Nikki Fried, now chair of the Florida Democratic party, became commissioner of agriculture in 2018, the year Nelson lost his seat to Republican Rick Scott.
But the retired army lieutenant colonel and Purple Heart recipient is certain his experience makes him the right person to lift the party here out of its funk. Years of Trump, and the extremism of Florida’s hard-right governor Ron DeSantis, he said, have left the state’s voters crying out for an end to “the chaos”.
“The urgency of this moment has become so acute. That requires bold action,” he said.
“I served more than 20 years in the military, and my politics was not a feature. It was all about national security. I’m running here as a kind of a different kind of Democrat, I’ve got my handguns, a concealed carry permit, not the standard fare, kind of like coastal elite Democrat.
“People give me a hearing without just dismissing me because I’m running as a Democrat. The fact I reported corruption at the highest level, people remember. Or if they don’t, it doesn’t take much to remind them that I was in the middle of it.”
Our conversation takes place in a busy coffee shop in a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, where the Vindman family relocated in 2023 after leaving Washington. Patrons at other tables lean in curiously as he speaks, certain they know his face from somewhere, even if they can’t quite place it in the moment.
It was during a highly visible October 2019 appearance before Congress that Kyiv-born Vindman, then the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, testified that he was on a July telephone call between Trump and Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The US president made an improper request to Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden, he told lawmakers, and that he reported his concern to superiors – including his twin brother Eugene, the NSC’s senior ethics official – that the demand amounted to an extortion attempt that undermined US foreign policy.
Trump was impeached (though not convicted in the US Senate) and immediately launched a campaign of vitriol and retribution that ultimately saw both brothers ousted from their roles. Republicans denounced Alex Vindman, who served the US for 21 years in uniform, as a “traitor”, a smear they continue to repeat today.
Given that ordeal, one might wonder, why would Vindman, author of a New York Times bestseller, and senior adviser to an advocacy group helping veterans get elected, want to eschew a lower-profile, comfortable family life in Florida with his wife and teenage daughter to jump into the viper’s nest of Washington politics?
“Sitting out on the sidelines was not an option, just like reporting corruption, no matter who it was,” he said.
“It was tough because my wife was certainly not interested in putting the family back into the crosshair. That was probably one of the tougher moments, just making the decision to go back into public service, and with all the costs. Political violence is a reality, and all the negativity.
“I know there are plenty of detractors, but in these first six weeks I feel a huge amount of support and kind of a new hope for a balanced politics in this state.”
Vindman says he has already learned a great deal about voters in a whirlwind month and a half zipping around Florida, attending numerous campaign events, and listening to their dissatisfaction.
“Democrats, they’re ready to walk over hot coals,” he said.
“There is a lot of curiosity about me from more traditional, pre-Trump era Republicans that feel homeless. And I think the independents are, at this point, not necessarily kind of plugged in. They’ll pay attention later, and we’re getting some indications that they’re also open to my message of ending the chaos, crushing corruption, cutting costs, and that’s just the wave tops.”
Chaos is a word he returns to multiple times during the interview, blaming for it “single-party rule in Florida that doesn’t help anyone”.
It is clear he is already looking beyond a crowded August primary to the November special election, in which the Democratic nominee will challenge Republican incumbent Ashley Moody, installed by DeSantis in January last year after Trump elevated Marco Rubio to become his secretary of state. The winner will serve the remaining two years of Rubio’s term.
“It’s a stark contrast between me and my opponent, who’s appointed,” he said
“People are really, really interested in change, in changing direction. My race is entirely focused on my opponent, I’m not focused on anything besides Ashley Moody and the fact that she is a complete blank check, rubber stamp on all the chaos, and corruption, and this cost crisis that all the states feel.”
We drill into some of the issues that resonate deeply with Florida’s voters, specifically housing affordability, and soaring prices.
“The most important issue is just the cost of living in the state,” he said. “I came here because there’s no state income tax, the promise of an affordable retirement that’s increasingly out of reach for folks here. Part of that is the cost of insurance, how premiums have grown.
“People are looking to leave the state because the insurance market is broken and Ashley Moody is a central figure from when she was attorney general, giving the large insurance companies a pass and letting rates skyrocket while they fail to pay on claims.”
Despite the hurt Vindman says he sees, he is also conscious of the Republicans’ recent stranglehold on Florida. The party holds supermajorities in both of the state’s legislative chambers; the last Democratic governor left office in 1999; there are 1.5m more Republicans than Democrats among Florida’s 13.3 million registered voters; and Democrats have lacked an efficient grassroots voting operation in the state since Barack Obama’s second presidential win in 2012.
Vindman, buoyed by recent Democratic successes including Eileen Higgins’s election as mayor of Miami, insists his path is “viable”.
But he concedes: “I need help from any and every corner. There are folks enthusiastic about my candidacy, from left, right and center, and I’m welcoming all of that support in order to make this thing happen.
“My campaigning will be ordered around this basic theme of ending the chaos, providing kind of a steady hand, and, which I’ve done, accountability for corruption.”
