TAMPA, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis’ announcement that he’s appointing Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Marco Rubio places the Tampa area native in an exotic locale far from home.

But if her personal history is any indication, she will attract notice in Washington as a hard-charging — and highly partisan — advocate for her home state.

“Every day I go to work, every decision that I make, every person I hire, I do so with the understanding that the people of Florida gave me this opportunity,” she said after Thursday’s announcement. “And I want to deliver on what I assured them.”

From Plant City’s Strawberry Queen, to a top university student, to a federal prosecutor, to a Hillsborough judge, to the state’s attorney general, this homegrown talent now finds herself on a national and global stage.

“She’s never forgotten where she’s from,” said former Hillsborough Chief Judge Ronald Ficarrotta, who worked alongside Moody in the judiciary. “I’m a Democrat, but I still have a great deal of respect for her.”

Ashley Brooke Moody was born in 1975 in Plant City. To know her is to know her hometown.

The small yet growing city about 25 miles east of Tampa is a place that relishes small-town values and its agrarian past. It’s known as the Winter Strawberry Capital of the World — a reference to the area’s biggest cash crop.

It is a place where the name Moody means a lot.

The Moody family goes back five generations in Plant City. Moreau Estes Moody opened a pharmacy there in 1891 and the city’s first bank in 1902. The family since then has included mayors, bank presidents and politicians.

Her father, James S. Moody Jr., is a longtime federal judge in Tampa who previously served as a Hillsborough circuit judge and, before that, operated a Plant City law firm. Her mother, Carol Moody, is a lawyer who assisted senior citizens with Bay Area Legal Services.

Her grandfather, James S. Moody Sr., was a state lawmaker and Hillsborough County circuit judge. A few years ago, DeSantis appointed her brother, James S. Moody III, to be a county judge.

The oldest of three, Moody in the early 1990s became the face of Plant City High School.

An “A” student, she was a member of the National Honor Society. Her extracurriculars included cheerleading captain, Future Farmers of America and three years as her class vice president. She was elected to Plant City’s Youth Council, a program that gave students a feel for local government leadership.

She was active in the school’s drama club. Her first mention in local media came as a cast member in a school production of the musical “Annie.” In her senior year, a photo showing her performance in “The Inner Circle” ran in local newspapers.

Before she became a powerhouse lawyer, the accolade many people associated with Ashley Moody was her 1993 crowning as Plant City’s Strawberry Festival Queen. The competition is a local tradition that goes back nearly a century. Moody bested more than 30 other hometown girls in a pageant that judged them on interviews, public speaking, swimsuits and beauty.

“I cannot believe that from a little baby Ashley grew up and was elected queen,” her father told the Tampa Tribune.

She followed her family’s footsteps to the University of Florida, where she would earn bachelor’s, master’s and law degrees, making her a “triple Gator.” She became a member of Florida Blue Key, the university’s prestigious honor society that has groomed the careers of governors, senators and other Florida leaders.

Moody first registered to vote as a Democrat. Her hometown was solidly Democratic back then.

She switched to Republican in 1998 as Jeb Bush was vying to become governor and a slate of conservative candidates took control of the Legislature.

Bush chose Moody a year later to serve on the Board of Regents, the defunct governing body for the state’s university system. She helped select UF’s president later that year. The 24-year-old law student told the Tampa Tribune her responsibilities kept her so busy she only slept about five to six hours a day.

“People have a lot of faith and trust in me,” she told the Tribune. “They’re always offering me leadership positions. These things just seem to fall into my lap.”

As a young attorney at Holland & Knight, she handled commercial litigation. She was the two-time female champion of the firm’s annual chicken wing eating contest.

She went on to work as a federal prosecutor in Jacksonville. She handled drug, fraud and firearm cases. It was there that she met Justin Duralia, an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. They later married.

Ascent to the bench

Five years into her legal career, Moody returned to Tampa with her sights set on the bench.

Ashley Moody became Florida's youngest judge when Hillsborough County voters elected her at age 31 in 2006. In 2006, she’d attained the minimum required years of practice to become a judge and launched a campaign to join the Hillsborough circuit. She faced two opponents, both men, who’d been lawyers for longer than she had.

She endured criticisms that she was too inexperienced to be a judge. Yet, she got the most votes in that year’s primary and went on to win 60% in a runoff. At 31, she became the youngest judge in the state.

Her tenure as a local judge was mostly low-key, though she occasionally found herself at the center of high-profile cases.

Perhaps the most notable was that of Trevor Dooley. The Valrico man was accused of manslaughter in the death of his neighbor, David James, whom he shot during a fight on a neighborhood basketball court. Moody rejected Dooley’s claim of self-defense under Florida’s stand your ground law. She later presided over his trial, where a jury convicted him.

“All of this could have been avoided if somebody had stopped and said, ‘Let me introduce myself,’” she said in Dooley’s sentencing hearing. (Dooley’s conviction was later overturned on appeal due to erroneous jury instructions about the justifiable use of deadly force. Years later, he accepted a probation sentence in a deal with prosecutors.)

Ten years into her time as a judge, Moody raised eyebrows when she abruptly resigned. She soon confirmed speculation that she had quit to start a campaign for Florida’s attorney general.

She drew a swift endorsement from the office’s then-occupant, ex-Hillsborough prosecutor turned Republican star Pam Bondi.

“I’ve known her most of my life,” Bondi told the Tampa Bay Times then. “I don’t think there could be a more qualified candidate for attorney general in the entire state of Florida.”

“I call her the Energizer Bunny,” her father told the Times. “If anybody can do it, she can.”

Ten years into her time as a Hillsborough judge, Ashley Moody raised eyebrows when she abruptly resigned. She soon confirmed speculation that she had quit to start a campaign for Florida’s attorney general.

Her entry into the statewide political scene came with a promise not to mix politics with the work of the state’s chief legal officer. In campaign ads, she described herself as “a prosecutor, not a politician.”

She voiced strong support for Trump, who she said was “committed to making the tough decisions necessary to strengthen our country.”

Years earlier, Moody and members of her family were among those who sued Trump to get back deposits they’d paid ahead of the construction of Trump Tower Tampa, a condominium project that failed. Trump settled the case in 2011.

Her first couple of years in office saw Moody pursuing initiatives against opioid abuse, human trafficking and other common law enforcement targets.

“In my term as attorney general, I will never do the bidding of anyone except the people of the state of Florida,” she told Politico after her first year in office.

Yet, as Moody established herself as a statewide figure, she became a loyal ally to DeSantis and gravitated toward hyperpartisan causes.

In 2019, she pushed for the U.S. Census to add a question about whether respondents were American citizens.

Later, she spearheaded lawsuits against President Joe Biden‘s administration over vaccine mandates, masking requirements and immigration. She defended the Parental Rights in Education law, which was labeled by opponents as “don’t say gay,” and she supported a Florida Supreme Court reversal of abortion rights protections in the state’s constitution.

She was among the chorus of Republicans to question the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Shortly after Trump’s loss to Biden, Moody was one of 10 attorneys general to sign on to a legal brief calling for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that allowed Pennsylvania election officials to count some late-arriving absentee ballots.

She later signed on to a brief in a Texas lawsuit that alleged “voting irregularities” in four key swing states won by Biden and urged the high court to allow each state’s legislature to decide how to vote in the Electoral College.

Her efforts drew backlash from citizens, lawyers, former lawmakers and a former Florida Supreme Court justice. A letter to the editor in the Times wondered if Moody was trying to “out-Bondi” her predecessor, who also lent her voice to false voter fraud claims.

Even lawyers in Moody’s own office scoffed at the Texas lawsuit. One called it “bats--t insane.”

Her tone changed after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, where Trump supporters disrupted the certification of the election.

In the wake of the insurrection, Moody condemned the violence and called attacks against police officers “unacceptable,” saying that anyone who assaults law enforcement “should be brought to justice.”

At the same time, Moody’s office scrubbed from her online biography references to her association with the Rule of Law Defense Fund, a nonprofit arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association, which helped draw Trump’s supporters to the Capitol.

Her venture into election denialism drew fire.

“I’m not just a tad disappointed, I’m extremely disappointed,” former Hillsborough Chief Judge Manuel Menendez Jr. told the Times in 2021.

“A former judge should know better,” said Dan Gelber, a former Democratic lawmaker, who ran for attorney general against Bondi in 2010.

The Lincoln Project, a national activist group of anti-Trump Republicans, called on her to resign.

Yet, Moody had no problem winning a second term. In an election that solidified the Republican grip on the Sunshine State, she beat her Democratic opponent, former Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala, by a little more than 20 percentage points.

U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr. swears in Attorney General Ashley Moody, his daughter, who is accompanied by her husband, Justin Duralia, during her inauguration ceremony on Jan. 3, 2023, in Tallahassee.[ Miami Herald (2023) ] Moody was, by then, seen as a top contender to be the state’s next governor.

Adam Goodman, a national Republican media consultant who is credited with boosting the careers of Bondi and other politicians, told the Times in 2021 that Moody’s political story was yet to be written.

“You may disagree with her philosophically, but you can’t question her credentials,” Goodman said at the time. “She’s smart as hell.”

Amid the high-stakes game of musical chairs that followed Republican victories in 2024, all eyes were on her and Florida’s open Senate seat.

As DeSantis made her appointment official Thursday, he recited a list of her actions as attorney general that aligned with his political priorities, including aggressive stances on immigration, fights against the Biden administration and defenses of Trump.

“In every major battle we have had since I have been governor, she has been with us every step of the way,” DeSantis said.

Darryl Paulson, a professor emeritus of government at the University of South Florida, said he always saw Moody as the likely option for the Senate appointment. Her strongest asset, he said, is her loyalty to both DeSantis and Trump.

“Fealty to Trump is the most important political attribute of any Republican who seeks to move up politically,” Paulson said.

Paulson also noted that Moody will be the second female Republican senator from Florida, which will help Republicans with women voters. And she has championed issues that are important to Republicans broadly, like opposition to recreational drugs and the Affordable Care Act.

Such partisanship tends not to hurt those who seek to hold power.

“Both political parties march in lockstep to the beat of their party drummers,” Paulson said. “Independent thoughts are penalized and everyone must follow the dictates of their party leaders, and that is especially the case of following the commands of Trump.”

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