Ashley Moody will soon be transferred from the Florida Cabinet to the U.S. Senate.
Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Moody, the state’s attorney general, to succeed U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who is set to become President-elect Donald J. Trump’s next secretary of state.
DeSantis made the announcement at a news conference in Orlando on Thursday.
The moves are the latest in a rotation among Florida Republicans as Trump relies heavily on recruiting from the Sunshine State to staff his incoming administration.
Moody, 49, became Florida’s second female attorney general when she succeeded Pam Bondi in 2019, and she will also become the second woman to represent Florida in the U.S. Senate. Republican Paula Hawkins served one term from 1981 to 1987 but lost her re-election bid to Democrat Bob Graham.
Moody has deep roots in Florida’s legal community as a former federal prosecutor and state circuit court judge. She graduated from the University of Florida School of Law in 2001.
After law school, Moody joined the firm of Holland & Knight before running for and winning a judgeship on the 13th Judicial Circuit Court in Hillsboro in 2006. Her brother, James Moody III, was appointed to the same court by DeSantis in 2022.
In 2018, she resigned to run for attorney general, defeating former state Rep. Frank White, a Pensacola Republican, in the primary and another former state Rep., Tampa, in the general election Democrat Sean Shaw.
Moody has been a staunch ally of Trump, supporting Trump’s legal challenges to the certification of election results in a handful of states when he lost the 2020 election to Biden, for example. Those challenges were dismissed by the courts.
That record suggests she will be a reliable vote in the Senate to support Trump’s agenda and take a tough stance on immigration enforcement — one of DeSantis’ demands for Senate appointees.
When DeSantis learned of the upcoming Senate vacancy shortly after the November election, he posted on X:
“Florida deserves a Senator who will help President Trump fulfill his election mandate, take strong action on immigration and border security, confront an entrenched bureaucracy and the administrative state, reverse the state’s fiscal decline, and be powered by conservative principles, and has a good track record of results”.
This is a developing news story. Please check back soon for more information.
Gray Rohrer is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network’s Florida bureau. You can contact him at grohrer@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @GrayRohrer.
This article originally appeared in the Tallahassee Democrat: DeSantis appoints Ashley Moody to replace Marco Rubio in U.S. Senate
