Teamsters President O'Brien Endorses Republican Sen. Ashley Moody in Florida
A union leader who spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention is again crossing party lines, this time backing a Florida Republican incumbent two days before the midterm election.
Teamsters General President Sean O'Brien publicly endorsed Republican Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL) on Sunday, November 1, 2026, stating he cast his ballot for her in her Senate reelection race against Democratic state Rep. Angie Nixon. The statement was reported by the Washington Examiner.
"Sen. Moody has been extremely helpful working with the Teamsters to protect workers' pensions, defend good-paying jobs, and support well-funded apprenticeship positions," O'Brien said in the statement, according to the Washington Examiner.
O'Brien's endorsement carries political significance because the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents approximately 1.3 million members according to the union's own public disclosures, has historically aligned with Democratic candidates in federal races. O'Brien has previously broken from that pattern. At the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, O'Brien delivered an address, making him a rare major union leader to appear at a Republican nominating convention in recent decades.
The Florida Senate race pits Moody, who was appointed to the seat and is seeking her first full elected term, against Nixon, a Democratic state representative. Moody entered the final days of the campaign as the frontrunner, according to the Washington Examiner report, which noted she is widely expected to win reelection.
O'Brien did not characterize his statement as a formal Teamsters union endorsement. The union has not, as of the date of publication, issued a formal organizational endorsement in the Florida Senate race that is publicly listed in Federal Election Commission records or on the union's official disclosure filings. What O'Brien described was a personal vote and an implicit endorsement, not a union political action committee expenditure.
The Teamsters maintain a political action committee, DRIVE (Democrat Republican Independent Voter Education), whose expenditures are disclosed to the Federal Election Commission. As of the publication date, FEC records do not reflect a DRIVE expenditure in favor of Moody in the current cycle. What those records would show, if any such contribution existed, is a direct contribution or independent expenditure filed under Moody's FEC candidate committee.
Nixon, the Democratic challenger, is a member of the Florida House of Representatives. Her campaign has focused on issues including healthcare access and workers' rights, according to publicly available campaign materials. Her FEC filings for the current cycle are on record with the commission, though specific fundraising totals as of November 1, 2026, are not reflected in the source material available for this report.
The Moody endorsement is the latest example of O'Brien positioning the Teamsters as an organization willing to back candidates from either party, a stance he has publicly articulated since taking the union's top post in 2021. That posture has drawn both praise from Republicans and criticism from some Democratic labor allies, though the internal Teamsters membership reaction to the Florida endorsement is not captured in the source material reviewed for this report.
For broader context on the 2026 midterm environment, an NBC poll published prior to election day found Democrats holding a midterm lead nationally, as covered by NBC Poll: Democrats Hold Midterm Lead as Trump Disapproval Reaches Record High. Whether O'Brien's endorsement has a measurable effect on Moody's vote share in a state with a substantial union membership is unknown. Precinct-level turnout data and exit polling, if conducted, would be the public records most likely to illuminate that question after election day.