Lloyd Doggett

Early life and education

Doggett was born in Austin, Texas, the son of Alyce Paulin (Freydenfeldt) and Lloyd Alton Doggett. His maternal grandparents were Swedish. Doggett graduated Omicron Delta Kappa and received both a bachelor's degree in business administration and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Texas at Austin, where he served as student body president his senior year. While attending the University of Texas at Austin, he also joined Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.

Early career

Doggett served as a member of the Texas Senate from 1973 to 1985. He gained attention in 1979 as a member of the "Killer Bees", a group of 12 Democratic state senators who opposed a plan to move the state's presidential primary to March 11. The intent was to give former Texas Governor John Connally a leg up on the 1980 Republican nomination. The Killer Bees wanted a closed primary. When this proposal was rejected, they walked out of the chamber and left the Senate two members short of a quorum. The bill was withdrawn five days later.

He was the Democratic nominee for the 1984 United States Senate election in Texas, losing to the Republican candidate, then-U.S. Representative Phil Gramm, by a wide margin. Doggett authored the bill creating the Texas Commission on Human Rights, as well as a law outlawing cop killer bullets and a sunset law requiring periodic review of government agencies.

In 1989, Doggett became both an Associate Justice of the Texas Supreme Court and an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

Before 2012

Doggett was elected to the House of Representatives in 1994 in what was then the 10th district after 32-year incumbent Jake Pickle retired. He was one of the few Democrats to win an open seat in that year's massive Republican landslide. Running for reelection in 1996, Doggett defeated Republican nominee Teresa Doggett, to whom he is no relation. It marked the second election in a row in which he defeated a black female Republican. In the years following his first reelection, Doggett consistently won around 85% of the vote, facing only Libertarian opponents. The 10th, which had once been represented by Lyndon Johnson, had long been a liberal Democratic bastion in increasingly Republican Texas.

Redistricting by the Texas Legislature in 2003 split Austin, which had been entirely or almost entirely in the 10th district for more than a century, into three districts. Through Republican gerrymandering, Doggett's home wound up in a new, heavily Republican 10th district stretching from north central Austin to the Houston suburbs. Most of his former territory wound up on the 25th district, which consisted of a long tendril stretching from Austin to McAllen on the Mexican border. It was called "the fajita strip" or "the bacon strip" because of its shape. Doggett moved to the newly configured 25th and entered the Democratic primary—the real contest in the heavily Democratic, majority-Hispanic district. He won the primary and the general election.

On June 28, 2006, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the nearby 23rd district's lines violated the rights of Latino voters. As part of the 2003 redistricting, heavily Democratic and majority-Latino Laredo had largely been cut out of the 23rd and replaced by several heavily Republican areas near San Antonio. The decision turned on the fact that the 23rd was a protected majority-Latino district—in other words, if the 23rd was ever redrawn to put Latinos in a minority, an acceptable majority-Latino district had to be created in its place. While the new 23rd was 55% Latino, only 46% of its voting population was Latino. The Court therefore found that the 23rd was not an acceptable Latino-majority district. It also found that the 25th was not compact enough to be an acceptable replacement because the two Latino communities in the district were more than 300 miles apart, creating the impression that it had been deliberately drawn to pick up as many Latinos as possible without regard to compactness.

Due to the 23rd's size, the ruling forced the redrawing of five districts between El Paso and San Antonio, including the 25th. For the 2006 election, Doggett regained most of his old base in Austin (though not the area around the University of Texas at Austin, which stayed in the 21st), and also picked up several suburbs southeast of the city. After skating to reelection in 2006 and 2008, he was held to only 52 percent of the vote in 2010—his closest race since 1996.

Tenure

Described as an "endangered species", Doggett was one of only three white male Democratic House members from Texas in the 113th Congress (the others being Gene Green and Beto O'Rourke) in a state with mostly Republicans and minority members of the Democratic Party. Since Green's and O'Rourke's retirements after the 2018 election, Doggett is the only white male Democrat representing Texas in Congress. He is one of the most liberal white Democrats from a Southern district, and one of the most liberal people ever to represent Texas in Congress. David Hawkings of Roll Call described his tax and environmental policies as "muscular progressivism".

Doggett was a frequent critic of former Speaker Newt Gingrich while allying with David Bonior, the Democratic whip, when Bonior was leading "an effort to diminish Gingrich's power by raising continual questions about his ethics." He has been a close ally of Nancy Pelosi. In 2002, he supported her successful bid for Democratic leader over fellow Texan Martin Frost, a more moderate candidate.

On the local level, Doggett helped ensure the development of the Austin Outpatient Clinic, which opened in 2011 as the largest veterans' clinic of its kind in the country. In 2014, he secured passage of legislation to expand the Missions National Park and supported it being named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Doggett has long supported more open government, and is also a leading advocate for campaign finance reform. On the Ways and Means Committee, he has sought to close many overseas tax shelters. Doggett has authored legislation to create tax incentives for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and to create a nationwide Silver Alert system. From 2011 to 2016, he served as ranking member of the Human Resources Subcommittee and in 2017 became ranking member of the Tax Policy Subcommittee. His priorities there included education, health care, preventing child abuse, reducing prescription drug prices, fighting poverty, and eliminating multinational tax shelters and loopholes.

On July 2, 2024, Doggett became the first sitting Democrat in Congress to openly call for President Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 United States presidential election after the first presidential debate, in which many perceived Biden performed poorly in, causing many Democrats to start being concerned about Biden's age and cognitive ability.

Political positions

Doggett supports legalization of abortion. In 2003, he voted against a bill that would have banned all late-term procedures called partial-birth abortions. He was given a 100% by the NARAL. He voted in favor of a bill to provide federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in 2007.

Doggett supports environmental preservation. He is one of the leading opponents in the House of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve in Alaska. The League of Conservation Voters gave Doggett a 100% rating, an indication that he supports the group's interpretation of environmental preservation. In the 110th Congress (2007–08), he wrote climate change legislation that would have gone further to reduce greenhouse gases than bills his party's leaders supported.

In June 2009, Doggett voted for the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a bill that would have established an emissions trading system for American producers of carbon dioxide. He said, "It has been a difficult and significant decision". "I just decided that I will have a better chance to make changes later in the process if I acted in good faith now. But don't think this means I'm signing off on the conference report", he added.

In 2018, Doggett was rated 100% by the group Clean Water Action.

Doggett voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in the 109th Congress. He voted against HR 4380 and HR 2587, bills that would have banned adoption by same-sex couples. In 1996, Doggett voted for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), but in 2011 he co-sponsored the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal DOMA.

Doggett introduced legislation that would restrict American companies from using overseas strategies to reduce their corporate tax rates. When Obama unveiled his plan in May 2009 to significantly change how U.S.-based multinationals are taxed, it included aspects of Doggett's proposals to crack down on tax dodgers. He voted against the 2010 tax compromise, criticizing the renewal of the Bush tax cuts, saying "This bill is largely a mishmash of rejected Republican ideas that cost too much to accomplish too little." He led a group of Democrats who "criticized the inclusion of a Social Security payroll tax reduction, saying it would endanger the soundness of the program."

Committee assignments

Committee on Ways and Means

Subcommittee on Health (chair)

Select Revenue Measures Subcommittee

Joint Committee on Taxation

House Budget Committee

Caucus memberships

Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus

House Songwriters Caucus (co-chair)

Congressional Pediatric and Adult Hydrocephalus Caucus(co-chair)

United States Congressional International Conservation Caucus

Congressional Arts Caucus

Congressional Equality Caucus

Safe Climate Caucus

Congressional Progressive Caucus

House Baltic Caucus

Afterschool Caucuses

Congressional NextGen 9-1-1 Caucus

Congressional Coalition on Adoption Caucus

Congressional Caucus for the Equal Rights Amendment

Congressional Ukraine Caucus

Congressional Wildlife Refuge Caucus

Rare Disease Caucus

Congressional Caucus on Turkey and Turkish Americans

Congressional Freethought Caucus

Personal life

Doggett is married to Libby Doggett (née Belk), with whom he has two children.

The Sunlight Project estimates his average net worth in 2006 was over $13 million. In 2008, the Sunlight Foundation reported that of the 435 House members, Doggett has the 11th-highest amount of investment in oil stocks.

Doggett is a United Methodist.