(Video) Victoria Doyle - Congressional Candidate for FL - District 22
- Indivisible Boca Raton
- May 2
- 6 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
She Knows Exactly How Corporate Money Works. That's Why She's Refusing It.
Indivisible Boca Raton reached out to all candidates in Florida’s 22nd Congressional District who support democratic values and the protection of our democracy to give voters a direct opportunity to hear their platforms. Candidate forums should not be interpreted as endorsements.
Meet Victoria Doyle
Victoria Doyle opens her remarks at an Indivisible Boca Raton forum by naming the elephant in the room. She is running against Lois Frankel, who has represented Florida’s 22nd Congressional District since 2013 and is seeking her eighth term. Then she does something that most challengers in polite primary races avoid: she produces 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 asks the room. The answer: they all fund Lois Frankel's campaign. Then she gets to the largest donor of all. AIPAC, she says, has given Frankel $2 million total, including $1 million since Doyle announced her candidacy. "Her voting record," Doyle tells the room, "reflects every dollar of that."
“When your representative takes big donor money, they are not free to fight for you. They are beholden to those big donors who have big expectations.”
She says this as someone who spent her legal career representing Amazon, Facebook, and Apple in federal court. She knows exactly how that world works, and she left it.
Why she’s in this race
Victoria Doyle grew up in New York City, became a federal litigator handling major corporate clients, and by her own account reached a point where she said, “No, that’s it. I need to do something far more engaged, political, and change-making.”
She is running, she says, for people like Arlene, a woman she met doing voter registration in one of the poorest neighborhoods in West Palm Beach. “She is a mother and a full time manager at Walmart, and she relies on SNAP benefits to feed her family. A full time manager at the biggest retailer in the world, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, food benefits.” She is running, she says, “for young families who are now priced out of the neighborhoods they would love to live in and raise their children, and for retirees watching their drug price costs go up. We have the money, we have the resources. And what we don’t have is a Congress with the will to make structural economic changes.”
Doyle's case against Frankel is not just ideological. "She has been in Congress since 2013," Doyle tells the room. "She's running for her eighth term." In all that time, 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 fifth, Doyle says, was "an administrative amendment that was so complicated I would have to read it to you." The nonpartisan Center for Effective Lawmaking, a joint project of the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt, ranked Frankel the third least effective legislator last term among Florida's 28 members of Congress. Doyle pauses. "Statues and plaques are lovely. I don't deny that. But we need bold legislation and zealous advocacy."
She also raises an electoral concern she insists is “based on the facts of voter registration, not fear-mongering”: ten years ago, Democrats held a 52-point voter registration advantage in the district. That advantage is now 1.4%, roughly 11,000 voters. The district contains Mar-a-Lago. “I am worried that if the incumbent wins this primary, we may lose this seat to a Republican.”
What she actually said at the forum
The Q&A is the most revealing part. Doyle fields questions on Israel, on ICE, on the Save Act, on how she plans to work with Republicans, on her political philosophy, on campaign finance, and on the future of Democratic Party leadership.
On Citizens United, she goes further than most candidates: she wants a constitutional amendment to overturn it, which she freely acknowledges sounds impossible. “When I tell people that this is one of my top priorities, they laugh in my face.” She makes the case anyway: “In 1971, we amended the Constitution in 100 days, from passage in the House to ratification by the states, and that was to lower the voting age to 18. And Nixon was our president.” The reason it’s achievable, she argues, is simple: “Most Americans are very concerned, if not upset, about money in politics. This is a bipartisan issue.”
On Trump and the rule of law, she does not hedge. “I am deeply offended, perhaps especially as a lawyer, by the breaking the law with impunity face of America. I’ve never seen this before. I’m outraged by it.” Her goal, if elected: “I hope we can impeach and convict within 100 days while we’re amending the Constitution. It’s going to be a busy three months.”
On Israel, she is more cautious than some progressives in the room, but not evasive. “I am and have been a supporter of Israel.” That support, however, has its limits. “Netanyahu has been a terrible leader for Israel, like Trump has been a terrible leader for us. He’s corrupt. He’s facing trial. He seems incredibly arrogant and has a lot of military supplies to manifest his arrogance, shall we say.” She will not condone what he has done: “Sending him unlimited bombs and billions would not be my style.”
On ICE, Doyle parts from abolitionists. "I lived through 9/11 in New York City," she says. "My father worked in the Trade Center." ICE, she explains, was founded after September 11 specifically to serve a counterterrorism function, one that Trump has perverted for his own purposes. That history matters to her. "I'm just not ready to say kill it without trying to reform it and reclaim its original purpose. If it cannot be reformed and we need a new agency to handle counterterrorism, fine."
On the Save Act: “I’m totally opposed. We know this is a voter suppression effort. We know that non-citizen voting is already against the law, and we know it’s not a problem in America.” She places it in a broader pattern: “They create a problem that doesn’t exist, hammer it, and create a problem such that people are genuinely upset and worried. It’s all a scam. It’s to deflect you from things that are going badly for the administration, which right now is just about everything.”
On Democratic Party leadership, she is blunt. Asked about Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, she doesn’t reach for a diplomatic answer: “I don’t even consider them centrist. I consider them compromised and bought.” She will vote against both and wants to see Elizabeth Warren in leadership. On Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s treatment of Bernie Sanders in 2016: “I have never forgotten it or really forgiven it.”
On her political philosophy, she goes back to something her Wall Street father said to her: “Reagan cut my taxes. I got rich. It was wrong. Greed is infinite in human nature, and unchecked greed will destroy us.” Her conclusion: “We have to have limits on things. And that’s not just okay, it’s essential.”
Why this race matters
Doyle is running what she calls a “scrappy” campaign: no corporate PAC money, no lobbyist donations, no big checks. She will never match Frankel’s fundraising. Her theory is that 2026 is the rare year when that doesn’t have to matter. “If ever there was a time to run a low money, high energy campaign, I think 2026 might be the ideal year.” Her pitch on what a win would mean: “It would be a very nice statement in response to money in politics to say I raised a tenth of what she raised and I won.”
Her committee priorities are Judiciary and Oversight, because, as she puts it, 'I'm obsessed with accountability.' She also wants to regulate big tech and, in her words, “stop with the algorithm manipulation of absolutely everybody.”
She closes her opening remarks with a direct challenge to the room: “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.”
Donate to support Victoria’s Campaign: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/victoria-doyle-pbc
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