‘Hurdler’ aims to leap over top Democrat
During an 8-mile run on the beach, back when hewas a visiting lawprofessor at the University of Miami, Tim Canova once jumped over 572 garbage cans along the route on a dare. The leader of the running group nicknamed Canova “The Hurdler.”
“Iwas full of piss and vinegar,” said Canova, who ran steeplechase on his high school track team.
Canova, 55, a lawprofessor at Nova Southeastern University, now faces his biggest hurdle yet. He’s running for Congress and trying to topple U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a South Florida political stalwart and chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.
It’s the first time Wasserman Schultz, 49, of Weston, will face a primary opponent since shewon a U.S. House seat in 2004.
“I look at it as David vs. Goliath,” Canova told me Wednesday. “But you knowwhat? David won.”
So who is this guy, and what made him take $15,000 he’d been saving for a downpayment on a house in Hollywood to launch his quixotic campaign?
“Instead of sitting onmy couch and yelling at the TV, I decided to do something,” said Canova, a self-described progressive who quit corporate law for academia in the 1990s.
Tapping into voter discontent that’s erupted from both left (Bernie Sanders) and right (Donald Trump), Canova said he’s tired of a broken political system that cares more about corporate interests than regular people. He said Wasserman Schultz is part of the problem and called her “vulnerable.”
Riding the Bernie bump, Canova said his campaign has raised over $900,000 to date, mostly in small donations and 90 percent from outside Florida. He said he’s not taking corporate money.
A Wasserman Schultz campaign spokesman, Ryan Banfill, said by email that the she “takes every race seriously” and “is proud of her career-long progressive record of leadership on behalf of her constituents.”
Born on Long Island, Canova went to Georgetown Law School and then was miserable at a six-figure job with a big New York lawfirm. He once lived on an Israeli kibbutz, a communal farm. His stepfather of 40 years is Jewish. His father, an Italian immigrant and World War II veteran who became a Wall Street investment banker, died when hewas 10.
In the 1980s, Canova was an aide to the late U.S. Sen. Paul Tsongas, DMass. In 2011, Canova served as an adviser to Sanders, the independent U.S. senator from Vermont now giving Hillary Clinton fits. Canova has been warning about rising income inequality and a banking system stacked against the little guy in academic journals since the 1990s.
For the past four years, Canova has taught banking and finance lawat NSU’s Shepard Broad Law Center in Davie. He no longer practices law, retired from the New York Bar and inactive in the Washington, D.C., Bar.
“When people meet him, they go, ‘Whoa, we have a real choice here,’ said
Rich Bell, Canova’s campaign manager, who grew up with him in Merrick, N.Y. “In away, Debbie brought this on herself.”
Canova said he voted for Wasserman Schultz in 2014. Last summer, he called her office to express concerns about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade bill she voted to fast-track through an accompanying measure. Told to email a legislative aide, he said he never got a response.
“I have Washington experience, I have policy experience, I teach at the only lawschool in her district,” Canova said. “I couldn’t get a reply. That struck me as arrogance.”
In January, with no staff, organization or money, he filed to run against her. Canova said a local political consultant recommended by a friend hung up on him when he called to saywhat hewas doing. But in the internet age, insurgent candidates have other means of support.
After raising $560,000 in the first quarter of 2016, Canova’s contributions keep pouring in. The money has enabled him to open a field office in downtown Hollywood, hire campaign professionals and mull his advertising strategy. Sitting at plastic folding tables, eight full-time staffers eagerly worked computers and phones the other day. A Democratic activist walked in and warmly greeted Canova, thanking him for running and griping how Wasserman Shultz has become more distant from constituents as her national profile has grown.
Wasserman Schultz has declined Canova’s invitation to debate, standard practice for incumbents who don’t want to give challengers legitimacy.
“Qualifying ends in June and the final field isn’t set,” Wasserman Schultz’s spokesman said. “It’s premature to discuss the campaign schedule before that.”
At some point she risks ignoring Canova at her own peril.
Canova has been busy making the rounds at local union shops, Democratic clubs and synagogues. He hopes to exploit Wasserman Schultz’s opposition to medical marijuana and her support for the Iranian nuclear deal during the campaign. (He opposed the treaty but says nowthat it’s signed, the U.S. must monitor and enforce it).
Canova said he’s been studying the successful grassroots campaigns of Dave Brat, an economics professor and Tea Party activist from Virginia who shocked House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a 2014 Republican primary and Paul Wellstone, a Democratic academic who upset an incumbent Republican to win a Minnesota U.S. Senate seat in 1990.
His bid is already having an effect. Wasserman Schultz signs have started sprouting along roads and a big glossy Wasserman Schultz campaign mailer arrived in constituents’ mailboxes thisweek. With the Aug. 30 primary still nearly four months away, that’s unusually early.
“I’ve gotten her attention,” Canova said.