Who is Ashley Moody? Meet the Senate’s newest member from Florida

Gov. Ron DeSantis is sending Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody from Tallahassee to Washington, D.C., to fill Sen. Marco Rubio’s seat in the U.S. Senate. 

Rubio is in the midst of the confirmation process to serve as President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state. 

A 49-year-old mother of two, Moody has served as the state’s top prosecutor since 2019, having previously worked as an assistant U.S. attorney and a circuit court judge. The Republican state attorney general has supported lawsuits to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, and pushed against restoring voting rights for felons and marijuana legalization.  

Her husband, Justin Duralia, serves as the deputy chief of the Plant City Police Department in Hillsborough County. 

As a senator, Moody promised to work to undo regulations instituted by government agencies and shrink the federal budget. “The only way to return this country to the people, the people who govern it, is to make sure we have a strong Congress doing its job, passing laws and actually approving the regulations that these unelected bureaucrats are trying to cram down on the American people,” she said. 

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“I’ve got the backs of the American people,” Moody went on. “I am driven by many things in life. I will bring the influence of many things, in my life, my experiences certainly, but I am driven by my faith in God. First and foremost. I am driven by the fact that I am a mother and I still have a kid in school … I’m a trained accountant, so I can shrink the bloat of the federal government.”

Initially, Trump and Sens. Katie Britt, R-Ala., and Rick Scott, R-Fla., endorsed Trump’s daughter-in-law and former RNC co-Chair Lara Trump to succeed Rubio. However, last month, she said she withdrew her name from consideration. 

Moody will have to run to keep the seat in a 2026 special election, and House Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., has already said he will run for the seat. 

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Moody has worked in tandem with DeSantis to promote his agenda. Most recently she filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice for what she claimed was a federal government effort to block Florida’s investigation into the second Trump assassination attempt, which occurred at his Mar-a-Lago golf course. 

Last year, she sued the Biden administration for a rule she argued would force doctors to provide gender transition care. 

In 2024, she also petitioned the Supreme Court to disqualify a Florida ballot measure to expand abortion access by arguing its language could mislead voters.