Reelect Rep. Frankel and defeat bigotry

The re-election of U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, D-West Palm Beach, is as vitally important to the nation as to the voters of District 21, to whom we strongly recommend her.

In ordinary times, her record alone would earn her a fifth term, especially against the unqualified, unworthy and unwholesome opponent the Republican primary coughed up.

Frankel’s career has been one of integrity and diligence as a Florida legislator, mayor of West Palm Beach and four-term member of Congress. She holds one of the prized seats on the Appropriations Committee, where she has worked tirelessly to protect the Everglades and improve Florida’s ports. Her entire voting record mirrors the values of the vast majority of people in her district. She has posted it online here.

Among her notable positions, she helped pass House bills to lower prescription drug costs; address climate change and gun safety; and strengthen voting rights and election security. Her top three current issues are the pandemic, racial justice and police reform and voter suppression. In the long term, her priorities are reinforcing Social Security and Medicare, and addressing climate change and economic justice.

She cites a “hundred percent report card” from the League of Conservation Voters, plus the support of labor and “every progressive organization,” including Planned Parenthood.

Frankel, 72, is co-chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus.

Laura Loomer, her 27-year-old opponent, has accomplished nothing but promote her identity as an active volcano of Islamophobic bigotry and conspiracy theories. She has been a mouthpiece for InfoWars’ Alex Jones, the notorious fabricator of internet trash who peddled a baseless claim that the 2014 massacre of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax and the grieving parents were actors.

What makes this race much more than a local matter is that Loomer personifies the danger to the nation in the growing influence of racial bigotry and political paranoia within the Republican Party, with President Trump himself emblematic of those deeply un-American phenomena.

Locally, Loomer is remembered with disgust for having shown up outside Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, ostensibly as a “reporter” for InfoWars, to accuse students grieving the murders of 17 classmates and faculty of being shills reading scripts for an anti-gun conspiracy.

Nationally, she has been barred from just about every social media venue, and from the ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft, for her pernicious and persistent anti-Muslim bigotry. She had raved on-line about being late to a meeting because she couldn’t find a non-Muslim driver.

Conspiracy fantasies and racist screeds go viral and have staying power on the internet. They are aided by the indulgence, and in some cases the encouragement, of politicians who either relish them or lack the guts to speak up for common decency.

The Texas Republican Party, for example, has adopted a slogan “We Are the Storm” favored by QAnon supporters, and President Trump has retweeted QAnon posts at least 201 times.

An out-and-out follower of QAnon — the cyberspace equivalent of a lunatic asylum — won a Republican congressional nomination in a deeply red Georgia district that is almost certain to send her to Washington on Nov. 3. Trump promptly congratulated her.

Loomer is not associated with QAnon, but her Islamophobic racism is bad enough.

Trump was quick to praise Loomer for her plurality victory in the six-way Republican primary Aug. 18.

“Great going Laura,” he tweeted. “You have a great chance against a Pelosi puppet.”

Hardly likely. There are barely half as many registered Republicans as Democrats in District 21, where even independents outnumber the GOP. Frankel won with 62 percent in November 2016, was unopposed two years later, and drew more than twice as many votes in this month’s Democratic primary as all six Republicans did in theirs.

But Frankel hasn’t had an opponent as unprincipled as Loomer.

No Democrat, no independent, no selfrespecting Republican should take this race lightly. For the good of the Republican Party, as well as of the nation, unhinged radicals like her need to be defeated wherever they crop up before they can take over the mainstream.

Loomer did not return the Sun Sentinel’s candidate questionnaire or accept our invitation for an interview.

It cannot be that Loomer is truly representative of District 21’s 138,294 registered Republicans, but most of them stayed home. Two of her five also-rans appear to be out-and-out QAnon fanciers. The most qualified and reasonable candidate, Christian Acosta, finished second with only 25.5 percent to Loomer’s 42.5. It was her bigotry, he told us, that motivated him to run. We encourage him to remain active in politics.

Loomer’s campaign website features attacks on the tech companies that have banned her, touts her as a free-speech advocate, boasts about her “ambush interviews” with prominent — mostly Democratic — targets, and defines her as a “Jewish conservative journalist and activist.”

Had she not raised the issue of her religion — in a district with many Jewish voters — we wouldn’t remark on it, either.

But it is singularly ironic for someone who wears that faith on her sleeve to be making a political career of demonizing any other ethnic or religious group. Over the centuries, Jews have been the world’s most frequent victims of bigotry. For a Jewish woman to legitimize any form of it, as she does, violates the teachings of the Torah and is a dangerous disservice to her co-religionists as well as to the freedom of religion that most Americans hold high.

A landslide victory for Lois Frankel will be a triumph for all Americans over the demons of hate.

Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O’Hara, Dan Sweeney, Steve Bousquet and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson.