Hollywood, Fla.
“Your time is up, Debbie,” the woman says to me, referring to Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Florida congresswoman, staple of cable news hack-fests, and Democratic party stalwart who has chaired the Democratic National Committee since 2011. “You’ve been in elected office since [age] 25 . . . now you’re in the belly of the beast!” the woman intones, her voice rising.
Am I hanging out with a fire-breathing Tea Party right-winger? Well, not exactly. On this balmy Saturday evening in South Florida, I’m at “Millennials for Tim: #CanovaCrawl,” a pub crawl organized by Tim Canova’s campaign, and I’m chatting with a 28-year-old former Bernie Sanders volunteer who may be enjoying her brewskies just a bit too much (hence the theatrics). Canova, as it happens, is mounting a vigorous Democratic party challenge to Wasserman Schultz here in Florida’s 23rd Congressional District, which covers much of Broward County, home of Ft. Lauderdale. Billing himself as the “true progressive” in the race, in contrast to Wasserman Schultz, the corporatist centrist, Canova, a 55-year-old law professor, is trying to pull a left-wing version of what Dave Brat did to Eric Cantor a couple of years ago: take down a major congressional figure and highly visible party leader in a primary.
He has likability going for him. When a black-T-shirt-clad Canova makes an appearance at the pub crawl a little after 11, he exudes an easy presence, bantering fluidly with the crowd and picking up the tab on a round of beers. He speaks with a typical South Florida accent—i.e., the Long Island accent of his upbringing—and trades jokes, as well as exults over a recent editorial in a local newspaper that hammered Wasserman Schultz for efforts to scuttle regulations that would clamp down on payday lenders. It’s hard to imagine the famously frosty Wasserman Schultz, who lives in a gated compound far away from bohemian downtown Hollywood, gabbing at a bar with a bunch of twenty- and thirtysomethings.
Given that Wasserman Schultz is closely associated with the Clintons (she was a co-chair of Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign, an early endorser of her current campaign, and in her position as DNC chief scheduled primary debates in a way that was widely perceived to harm Clinton’s opponents), it’s perhaps not surprising that Canova’s base of support looks a lot like Bernie Sanders’s. Many in the crowd at the #CanovaCrawl, drawn heavily from the professional classes (a lawyer, an academic, a professional political organizer), supported or even worked for Sanders’s campaign. And like Bernie supporters hammering Clinton for her husband’s welfare reform bill, or her own vote for the Iraq war, Canova’s fans cite Wasserman Schultz’s various deviations from left-wing orthodoxy—her opposition to medicinal marijuana, her support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—as evidence of her unacceptability.
But as I learn during a slightly bleary-eyed interview with Canova the following morning (even though I’m firmly millennial myself, pub crawls that stretch into the wee hours are a challenge), the Sanders comparison actually sells Canova short in various ways.
For one, in contrast to Bernie Sanders, whose guiding ethos seems to be “Bash the Millionaires and Billionaires—Details TK,” Canova actually knows what he’s talking about. Although he’s never held office, Canova is an expert on banking laws as a law professor at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale. He has been churning out scholarly works on interest rates, regulatory affairs, and loan practices for decades. (His fierce criticism of big banks is delivered with a scholarly mien quite unlike Sanders’s street-corner shouting.) He wants to raise taxes on the super-rich, block the TPP, set up a federal infrastructure bank, and break up banks that are “too big to fail.”
But even more un-Bernie-like, Canova is hitting Wasserman Schultz from the right on some issues.
For example, Canova is a staunch opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, which Wasserman Schultz supports. “Iran never destroys its centrifuges, and it gets a $100 billion windfall at once,” he laments. “Iran gets it all, and within weeks, if not days, Iran is testing ballistic missiles,” he says, shaking his head. “Iran is a regime that can’t be trusted.” Wasserman Schultz, meanwhile, lost “a lot of credibility” among her constituents by voting for the agreement, Canova charges.
Canova also attributes Sanders’s loss in the crucial New York primary to Israel. “He started off at [the New York debate] saying ‘I’m 100 percent pro-Israel.’ But that was the last thing he said that was pro-Israeli.”
Canova’s fealty to Israel may look like mere political expedience in a congressional district that is reputed to be among the nation’s most Jewish—an estimated 20 percent of residents are members of the tribe—but he’s no Johnny Come Lately to the issue. Though Canova was raised Catholic in Merrick, New York, his stepfather was Jewish. Canova worked on a kibbutz for a few months as a young man and has returned to Israel some half-dozen times, including on a program sponsored by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies—a conservative think tank in Washington not often associated with liberal Democrats. “Where you sit determines where you stand on Israel,” he tells me, “and if you sit in a cloistered environment thousands of miles away in the U.S., it’s easy to . . . denounce Israel. If you sit in Tel Aviv, it’s a much different reality.”
“I would like to see a Palestinian state, [but] to me, I don’t see how you have one as long as all of these neighbors of Israel still don’t recognize its right to exist,” he continues, “as long as Iran is still funding Hamas, [as long as] Saudi Arabia has telethons for families of suicide bombers!”
Canova also offers his own version of the What’s the Matter with Kansas? thesis. Thomas Frank argued in the 2004 book that Republicans “trick” the working class to vote against their economic interests (i.e., for Republicans) by stressing cultural issues. But Democrats like Wasserman Schultz do the same thing, Canova tells me. While doing the bidding of the financial industry and big corporations, Wasserman Schultz “shouts about social issues,” he says. That ethos has infected the DNC under Wasserman Schultz’s leadership, he adds. Even though “economics are the most important issue to people,” Canova says, “I got one of those mass mailings from the DNC, a survey, one that asks you to check the ‘three most important issues.’ And they’re all social issues. There’s nothing about creating jobs!”
Given Canova’s focus on economics and willingness to be ideologically heterodox, I ask him his views on immigration. Reams of scholarly work, after all, have shown that mass illegal immigration hurts U.S. workers’ wages, particularly among the low skilled. But prominent Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Debbie Wasserman Schultz are increasingly unlikely to say anything negative about illegal immigration. “I’ve never been against border security at all,” says Canova, who also notes that fans of Ayn Rand support open borders. While stressing that he wants a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants currently in the country, he makes the point that “if you have an open border it’s a safety valve for the failed regimes south of the border. It’s not really solving the problem.”
Florida’s 23rd district is heavily Democrat—”Broward Blue,” as one pub-crawling activist put it to me. So, whoever wins the primary is essentially assured a seat in Congress. While no polling has been done yet, the race could be tight: Canova won’t be short on funds, as he’s raised nearly $1 million so far, from donors across the country (his campaign has officially achieved “virality”). Indeed, the day after President Obama endorsed Wasserman Schultz, Canova had one of his biggest fundraising days yet. This may be because Obama’s endorsement read a bit like a teacher’s tepid recommendation of a mediocre student (“excellent attendance!”). “Debbie has been a strong, progressive leader in Congress and a hardworking, committed Chair of our national Party,” the president said. Or perhaps it’s because Obama’s endorsement is now actually a net-negative to many progressive activists. Canova will also benefit from the fact that Florida’s presidential primary has already occurred. The August 30 election, therefore, will probably be a low-turnout affair, which will aid the candidate who has voter enthusiasm on his side. That’s likely to be Canova.
To Canova’s frustration, Wasserman Schultz has yet to acknowledge that her opponent exists. She’s refusing to debate him; in fact, she’s yet to utter his name in public. It appears that Wasserman Schultz, who has never faced a primary challenge before, is going with the time-honored “ignore him and hope he goes away” strategy. We know how well that worked for Eric Cantor.
Ethan Epstein is associate editor at The Weekly Standard.
