Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody will fill in Marco Rubio‘s seat in the US Senate, Guv Ron DeSantis announced Thursday. Rubio is set to resign to become President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state.
The governor said that he wanted to choose a replacement who will back Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda and “cut spending.” DeSantis said he did not announce the decision sooner because he didn’t want the media to make his choice a “pinata” and attack them for months before Rubio is sworn in.
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Moody will have to go through a special election in November of 2026 to complete the remainder of Rubio’s term. If she chooses, she will then be up for election to a full six-year term in 2028.
Axios reported that now DeSantis will name his chief of staff James Uthmeier as the AG.
Elected as the state’s top law enforcement officer in 2018, Moody campaigned on a pledge to voters that she’d be a prosecutor, not a politician. Along with DeSantis, Moody boosted her political profile during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, calling on the federal government to “hold China responsible” for the outbreak.
Before running for statewide office, Moody worked as a federal prosecutor. In 2006, she was elected to the post of circuit judge in Hillsborough County, home to Tampa.
As the state’s attorney general, Moody has been instrumental in defending DeSantis’ conservative agenda in court and has joined other Republican-led states in challenging the Biden administration’s policies, suing over changes to immigration enforcement, student loan forgiveness and vaccine mandates for federal contractors.
