Democrat Jennifer Jenkins Announces Her Candidacy For U.S. Senate

By Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix

September 10, 2025

Former Brevard County School Board member Jennifer Jenkins announced Wednesday that she will be a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Republican Ashley Moody.

With the exit of Josh Weil from the race earlier this summer, the 38-year-old Jenkins is now the biggest name in Florida Democratic politics to enter the race. She acknowledges that with Florida’s lean to the political right in recent years, she would be an underdog against Moody, but says her upset victory in a race for school board in 2020 in Brevard is proof that she has the stuff to win statewide.

“I live in a deep red county and I ran as an outed Democrat against a really well-known Republican incumbent,” Jenkins said in a phone interview last week, referring to Tina Descovich, who went on to co-found Moms for Liberty, the conservative parental rights organization.

“It was a nonpartisan race, but that’s not how the race was won by any means,” Jenkins added.

“One of the only strategies that my opponent had was to make sure that everyone knew that I was a registered Democrat and I still managed in a year that Donald Trump won [in the county] by 17 points to defeat her by nearly 10 points. And I did that just by being true to who I am. By being an honest educator, I was passionate about what I was advocating for. Being a mom. And I just reject the idea that isn’t possible across the state. Because if I can do it in deep red Brevard County, it can be done in other areas.”

Florida Democratic Senate candidates have not been competitive against GOP incumbent in recent years. Marco Rubio defeated Val Demings by more than 16 points in 2022, and Rick Scott defeated Debbie Mucarsel-Powell by 13 points in 2024.

Jenkins is aware that Democrats now have a 10-point registration gap with Republicans in the state but believes the fact that she hails from a conservative part of the state can boost her candidacy.

“I think it’s time that we had a Democratic statewide candidate who may not come from the traditional blue areas that we typically see, who understands what’s it like to talk directly to community members who may not be the same party registration and listen to their concerns and speak to those concerns and start to rebuild that trust and honest communication with them,” she said.

“Understand that there’s going to be somebody who’s really fighting for them and for their community and for their kids. And so we need to expand that coalition. We can’t just focus on our base, but we need to energize our base. We need to win back those independents, and we have to reach Republicans who are sick and tired of chaos and distractions.”

Dr. Susan MacManus, professor emerita at the University of South Florida, agrees Jenkins definitely will be an underdog against Moody. “She’s got a steep hill to climb,” she said. “Her advantages are that she’s a new face and people are looking for new people in politics.”

MacManus added that Jenkins’ experience on the school board and her priorities on education “is definitely an attention-grabbing credential, without question.”

In addition to her single term on the school board from 2020-2024, Jenkins has led a political committee supporting school board members in battleground states called Educated We Stand.

Jenkins has considered running for U.S. Senate for a few years now. She flirted in 2023 with entering the 2024 race against Republican Rick Scott, but opted not to.

A native of Staten Island, New York, Jenkins moved with her family to Brevard after her father retired from a career in law enforcement. She graduated from the University of Central Florida and worked for years as a speech pathologist in the Brevard County School District until she opted to run for the school board in 2020.

Jenkins’ tenure on the board took place as school boards across the country were riven with intense battles over face mask mandates, book bans, and treatment of LGBTQ students, especially transgender children.

“Protests in front of my home. The vandalism on my property. Three foot ‘F-U’ letters burned into my lawn. Be followed by private investigators. Slanderous websites,” she recounted in a speech in Tampa in 2023.

She opted against seeking a second term.

“I don’t know what you can throw at me that would shock me or make me waver, quite frankly,” she now says about that time. “I pushed through the loud noise and the hate and the intimidation because it was the right thing to do. And sometimes that’s hard. And it came at a great personal cost to me and my family, but I had to do it anyway. I knew it was the right thing to do.”

Whoever wins the Democratic primary will face Moody, 50, appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to replace Marco Rubio in January. Rubio left the seat he had held since 2010 after Donald Trump picked him for U.S. Secretary of State. While she was elected twice statewide to serve as the state’s attorney general, Jenkins believes Moody remains an unknown quantity to many Floridians.

“Honestly, I don’t think most people really know who she is,” Jenkins said. “And that’s dangerous. I think part of this campaign is trying to raise awareness of how dangerous Ashley Moody can be, because she’s just a rubber stamp for Ron DeSantis and for Donald Trump. She’s a career politician just like Rick Scott. They take their marching orders from insurance industries and special interests and the extremist party leaders, and I think it’s really important for voters to be aware of that.”

In a press release announcing her candidacy, Jenkins said Moody had voted to rip health care away from more than 1 million Floridians when she supported the Trump domestic spending bill, which includes cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. She also criticized her for her recent comments supporting DeSantis’ proposal to end vaccine mandates.

MacManus noted that Jenkins is less well known than Moody, however, and that’s where she’ll need financial support from Democratic groups outside Florida that have dramatically reduced sending such resources in the past two election cycles.

The Moody campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Other Democrats who have filed to run for the office include Tamika Lyles, Alex Gould, and Paul Ron Cruz. The primary election takes place on Aug. 18, 2026.

The Florida Phoenix, a nonprofit news site that’s free of advertising and free to readers, covers state government and politics through a mix of in-depth stories, briefs, and social media updates on the latest events, editorial cartoons, and progressive commentary. The Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by grants and a coalition of donors and readers.