South Florida Democrat Rep. Lois Frankel defeated outsider Victoria Doyle in a Democratic primary race on Tuesday, positioning the longstanding Jewish candidate for a likely victory this November.
The Associated Press called the race less than an hour after polls closed, at 7:41pm, when Frankel secured 75% of the votes, with 92% of votes counted. Doyle had accrued 23.1% of the votes by this time.
Frankel faced a serious challenge from Doyle on the campaign trail, particularly after a statewide reshuffling of districts ended up reshaping local constituencies. President Donald Trump had pushed for GOP governors to reshape voting boundaries, in a bid to strengthen the Republican party’s grasp on Capitol Hill. Responding in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis and state legislators opted to merge multiple Democratic districts.
Prior to the redistricting, Frankel was serving constituents from Delray to West Palm Beach in the state’s 22nd District. But the revamped District 22, which is expected to turn red, will instead stretch from Palm Beach County to Marco Island on the Gulf Coast. Frankel, who has been in Congress since 2013, opted to run in a reshaped 23rd District, which includes parts of Broward County and southern Palm Beach County.
Israel and AIPAC were not major points of contention between Frankel and Doyle, whose priorities focus on affordability, women’s rights and immigration reforms.
Frankel, however, is a staunch supporter of Israel who has promised “continued security assistance to Israel and robust funding for Israel’s missile defense capabilities.” Pro-Israel PACs have spent about $861,000 backing her over the course of her career, according to Track AIPAC.
“The major focus of our campaign is the need to get big money out of politics,” the Victoria Doyle for Congress campaign told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an emailed statement, prior to the primary.
Accusing her opponent of taking “millions of dollars in special interest, corporate, big donor, and PAC money” and calling out AIPAC as Frankel’s biggest donor, the campaign stressed that Doyle “takes no PAC or special interest money, and runs a scrappy grassroots campaign centered on voters rather than donors.”
“For a while Frankel supporters attempted to label Victoria as ‘antisemitic,’ but the attack was laughably crude and unbelievable, seen more as Frankel’s desperation and being out of touch with the new district than anything else,” the statement added.
Frankel’s campaign did not reply to a request for comment.
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