Indivisible Boca Raton — Victoria Doyle opened her remarks at an Indivisible Boca Raton candidate forum by naming the elephant in the room: she is running against Lois Frankel, who has represented the district since 2013 and is seeking her eighth term. Then she produced a list.
"What do Walmart, Blackstone Private Equity, Lockheed Martin, billionaire developer Stephen Ross, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Orthopedic Surgeons PAC have in common?" Doyle asked the room. The answer: they all fund Lois Frankel's campaign. Then she got to the largest donor of all. AIPAC, she said, has given Frankel $2 million total, including $1 million since Doyle announced her candidacy. "Her voting record reflects every dollar of that."
Doyle, a former federal litigator who represented Amazon, Facebook, and Apple in court, said she left that world because she needed to "do something far more engaged, political, and change-making." She is running, she said, for people like Arlene, a woman she met doing voter registration in one of the poorest neighborhoods in West Palm Beach — a full-time Walmart manager who relies on SNAP benefits to feed her family.
Her case against Frankel is not just ideological. In all her years in Congress, Frankel has passed five bills, four of which were commemorative: a plaque, a post office, a gold medal, and two statues in the Capitol. The nonpartisan Center for Effective Lawmaking ranked Frankel the third least effective legislator last term among Florida's 28 members of Congress. "Statues and plaques are lovely," Doyle said. "But we need bold legislation and zealous advocacy."
The Q&A was the most revealing part. On Citizens United, Doyle wants a constitutional amendment to overturn it. "When I tell people that this is one of my top priorities, they laugh in my face," she said, before making the case: "In 1971, we amended the Constitution in 100 days."
On Democratic Party leadership, she was blunt. Asked about Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries: "I don't even consider them centrist. I consider them compromised and bought." She said she wants to see Elizabeth Warren in leadership.
On her political philosophy, she returned to something her Wall Street father told her: "Reagan cut my taxes. I got rich. It was wrong. Greed is infinite in human nature, and unchecked greed will destroy us."
Doyle closed with a direct challenge: "You all have been sounding the alarm on the countless catastrophes this administration has created, and you are so right, and you deserve a representative who matches your urgency."
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