(AP Photo/Richard Drew)
The national controversy swirling around former Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz's leadership has paid dividends for the campaign of the underdog primary challenger for her Florida congressional seat.
Since launching his primary challenge against Debbie Wasserman Schultz at the beginning of the year, law professor Tim Canova has built the most successful small-donor driven campaign in the country-that is, of course, except for Bernie Sanders. Of the roughly $2.3 million that Canova has raised so far, 76 percent has come from donors who have given less than $200. That's a higher share than any other House or Senate candidate, according to a new report from the Center for Responsive Politics.
A big chunk of that support has flowed in from out of state, including states with such strong Sanders bases as California and New York, due to the national appeal of his campaign. Sanders endorsed him in May and sent out a fundraising email on his behalf, which raised a whopping $250,000. In the two days after Wasserman Schultz's ouster from the DNC, Canova says he raised more than $125,000.
Canova's campaign against Wasserman Schultz has echoes of Sanders's challenge to Hillary Clinton, as he casts his opponent as beholden to big business. And just as Sanders mounted a surprisingly strong challenge to the "inevitable" Democratic nominee,
Canova is running against a never-before-challenged incumbent in a district that is a bastion of mainstream Democratic politics, not a spawning ground for political revolution.
Still, Canova thinks that the DNC controversy has weakened Wasserman Schultz's local support. If he can just get his name out there, he says, he has a shot.
"My small donor success is a result of Wasserman Schultz's disgraceful conduct at the DNC and her failure as a national leader," Canova told the Prospect in an interview. "[Her resignation has] been helpful to my campaign because her support has been a mile wide but an inch deep. There's a sense here that the momentum has shifted dramatically. I think I have a very good shot."
He's used that money to build an extensive field operation across the district, which includes most of the populous Broward County and parts of Palm Beach County and Miami Beach. He has set up four field offices, invested in a large field canvassing and direct mail operation, and purchased some TV and radio spots.
Sanders's most prominent outside ally during the primary, the National Nurses United union, has also mobilized on behalf of Canova. Since endorsing him in March, the union's super PAC has promoted his campaign on social media and its nurses in South Florida have phone banked and canvassed for him.
A poll done for Canova in the days following Wasserman Schultz's resignation from the DNC showed that the incumbent has an eight point lead-46 percent to 38 percent-among likely primary voters, with 16 percent undecided. Her lead narrowed though when pollsters informed the likely voters about policy specifics for both candidates. Still, three-fifths of respondents had no opinion about Canova or hadn't heard of him.
Canova says she's gotten comfortable in a deep-blue district with generally low turnout in primaries and midterms, and hasn't faced a primary challenge since being elected in 2004. He's tried to cast the incumbent as out of touch with her district and beholden to corporate interests, zeroing in on the money she's taken from the sugar industry, her vote in favor of fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership, as well as her opposition to medical marijuana and payday lending regulations.
He's also blasted her for lackluster job performance, pointing out that among the Florida delegation in 2015 she was second only to Marco Rubio in the number of votes missed. In a move calculated to win support among the district's more conservative Jewish voters, and quite at odds with the views of Sanders supporters, Canova has also criticized Wasserman Schultz for her support of the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran.
The question is: Does the discontent of liberals at the national level with Wasserman Schultz, primarily driven by Bernie Sanders's campaign, breach the boundaries of her South Florida district?
Wasserman Schultz doesn't think so.
After several months of doing her best to evade Canova, she is now trying to cast the challenger as a paper tiger.
"My opponent has no roots in this community, which is why 96 percent of his money is coming from out of state. The support that he has attracted is not a reflection of support in our community," Wasserman Schultz said in an interview with the Miami Herald editorial board.
Meanwhile, her deep political ties in the state and her fundraising connections as DNC chair have helped her raise more than $3 million. Unlike Canova's low-dollar donations, more than $1 million of Wasserman Schultz's take has come from donors who have given more than $2,000. Small donors account for just 29 percent of her campaign money, according to the Center for Responsive Politics report. She's raked in contributions from PACs-$451,652 from business PACs, $160,000 from organized labor PACs, and $144,209 from ideological PACs, the report finds. On top of that, Vice President Joe Biden hosted a fundraiser for her on Friday.
Patriot Majority PAC, a liberal super PAC that in the past has relied heavily on undisclosed "dark money," has also entered the fray. Just days after she was ousted from the DNC, the super PAC spent nearly $100,000 plastering Wasserman Schultz's district with supportive mailers and has reserved an additional $393,000 worth of ad buys in the coming weeks before the primary. The super PAC also released a poll Wednesday that showed Wasserman Schultz to have a big lead-59-26 percent with 15 percent undecided.
In the Miami Herald interview, she seemed to soften some of her controversial positions that Canova has latched on to. While she said that voters in her district have not voiced concern about trade agreements, she said if President Obama brings the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she voted to fast-track last year, before a lame-duck Congress, she will "very carefully examine the details" to ensure that labor and environmental standards are strong and that American jobs are protected. She also said that she hasn't decided whether she's in favor of an upcoming state ballot measure that would legalize medical marijuana. She has also reversed her position on payday lending regulations in recent months after having previously opposed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's crackdown on the industry's usurious practices.
She also says that she "fully intends" to debate Canova before the primary, something that her challenger has been demanding for months. The campaign is now responding to Canova's attacks, saying they're untruthful.
"He's flatly using untruths to introduce himself to the voters. Why? Because he knows the voters trust Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz," Ryan Banfill, a campaign spokesperson, said in an email to the Prospect.
While Wasserman Schultz has raised far more money in state, Canova says the money has come from fewer big-spending donors. "I have more individual donations in the state of Florida than does Wasserman Schultz, and she's been at it for 12 years and I've been at it for eight months," Canova told the Prospect. "I supposed that by her reasoning, I have more [local] support than she does."
"I've got plenty of roots in this community," he says, adding that her attack on his relative obscurity in the district is, "the best she's got. She doesn't attack me on any issues."
Some party leaders in Florida are annoyed with Canova for challenging one of the most (if not the most) powerful Democrats in the state. They've brushed aside his campaign, echoing Wasserman Schultz's critique that many of his supporters live out of district and even out of state, and questioned whether he has any base of local support.
"I don't think they're a significant part of the district really," Cynthia Busch, chair of the Broward County Democratic Party, told the Prospect at the Democratic National Convention. "That is not the same as having an organic effort within the county of people supporting locally someone they've known for a long time, and saying, 'Yes we are going to support this challenger.'"
Michael Calderin disagrees. Calderin sits on the board of the Progressive Caucus of the Florida Democratic Party and lives in southern Broward County, though just outside of the district boundaries. As a Canova supporter, he acknowledges that the area is not a progressive stronghold, but he's noticed growing pockets of more progressive voters, particularly younger people and those who haven't been involved in Democratic politics in the past. For them, he says, Canova seems a fresh alternative to a stale establishment figure.
"[Wasserman Schultz] hasn't really been seen as a progressive leader in the district for some time," Calderin says. "Young and new voters are seeing that side of her as opposed to the work that she had done earlier in her career."
Still, Canova is facing an uphill battle. Other progressives making first-time runs for Congress this year, like New York's Zephyr Teachout (who ran a strong insurgent primary campaign against Governor Andrew Cuomo two years ago) and Washington state's Pramila Jayapal (a longtime state senator who on Tuesday won the primary for an open congressional seat) are no strangers to the voters in their districts. Canova, on the other hand, is an academic who's not run for office before, and has low name recognition. Wasserman Schultz, by contrast, has been representing the area-first in the legislature, then in Congress-for the past quarter century.
Moreover, Florida's retiree-packed 23rd Congressional District is far from a Sanders Democrat stronghold. In Florida's presidential primary, Hillary Clinton won more than 72 percent of the vote in Broward County, which makes up a big chunk of the district. The Democratic base in the district is a microcosm of Clinton's strongest voting bloc, older longtime Democrats. The district is also home to many Jewish retirees who are ardent supporters of Wasserman Schultz, who was the first Jewish woman elected to Congress in the state.
"This is a district that is very safe for the incumbent," Robin Rorapaugh, a longtime Florida Democratic strategist who is not affiliated with either campaign, told the Prospect. "She has done nothing to offend her constituents. Regular primary voters are proud to support her."
Canova said that before the August 1 deadline to register to vote in the Democratic primary, his campaign had been reaching out to independents and even Republicans, trying to convince them to register as Democrats and cast their vote for him. He's also been reaching out to the Hispanic and African American communities in the district to increase his name recognition.
The results of the primary may be framed-fairly or not-as one bellwether for the future of Bernie's revolution. And as Sanders and his aides begin laying the groundwork for a political organization that supports progressive candidates at all levels of government, expect to see more challenges from people like Canova.
"I'm partial to the idea of ordinary folks stepping up and challenging folks to move revolution forward," Canova says. "If you take look at the congressional map, 90 percent are safe seats. If there are no primary challenges, there will never be progressive reform. And this is what [Wasserman Schultz] has taken advantage of so far."
