The Joe Crowley of South Florida, Debbie Wassermann Schultz, has finally agreed to participate in a debate. She'll face Republican Joe Kaufman and progressive independent Tim Canova tonite at Broward College, conveniently after many FL-23 voters have already cast their ballots. That's Debbie! As low as they go! [NOTE: Now I'm hearing she's making excuses about not showing up tonight] On Tuesday, the Miami Herald published an OpEd by Canova, Here’s why I’m challenging Debbie Wasserman Schultz as an independent. He reminded the readers that just about 3 years ago he took a leave as a tenured law professor at Nova Southeastern University "to run for Congress and challenge an entrenched incumbent, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, then the chair of the Democratic National Committee. To me, she was the epitome of why the party was failing: a corporate funded incumbent supporting a trickle-down Wall Street agenda of corporate trade deals, payday lending, private prisons, and endless wars." Blue America had urged Tim to run and endorsed him on the day he declared. This cycle we've endured him again, even though, technically, he isn't running as a Democrat.
My agenda is full employment, a renewable energy New Deal, a national infrastructure bank, ending the drug war and mass incarceration, universal single-payer healthcare, and protecting and conserving the environment. These issues are too pressing, and that’s why I decided to run again, to build on the momentum of the last campaign and continue waking voters on these issues.But voters often first want to know why I left the Democratic Party and decided to run this time with No Party Affiliation (NPA). My “DemExit” was an unexpected fallout from the aftermath of my 2016 primary. After falling short by a few thousand votes, I started receiving phone calls from election experts across the country questioning the accuracy of the results. Some suspected hacking or software rigging. Our own internal field numbers, based on more than 10,000 door knocks a week, also showed a far different outcome. To try to put the matter to rest, I decided to verify the vote by simply inspecting the paper ballots in some key precincts, as permitted under Florida’s public-records law and at my own expense. If the ballots matched up, the issue would be resolved. Brenda Snipes, the Broward County Supervisor of Elections, stonewalled my ballot request for months. I filed a lawsuit in June 2017, and while the lawsuit was pending, Snipes destroyed all the ballots, violating numerous state and federal criminal statutes. She concealed the ballot destruction from the court for more than two months and admitted to all this in sworn videotaped deposition. Snipes claimed there was no harm to the public because she says she maintained digital scanned images of the purported ballots. But no one is permitted to inspect the software that creates these digital ballot images. Instead, the software is “proprietary,” the private property of the same software vendors hired by Snipes. Under such circumstances, her illegal destruction of the ballots has undermined public faith and confidence in Broward elections.In May, the Florida Circuit Court granted me summary judgment, finding that Snipes broke the law. We recently settled for $150,000 in lawyers’ fees and court costs.I had been a Democrat most of my life, served as a legislative aide on Capitol Hill to a Democratic U.S. senator, volunteered my time and energy to several campaigns and was inspired in my academic work by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in banking and public finance.But when Democratic Party officials in Florida refused to join my call for an investigation into Broward’s ballot destruction, that was finally enough. I am running as an independent to speak to a much wider part of the electorate. Although Republicans make up only 23 percent of registered voters in my district, independent voters are quickly approaching the number of registered Democrats. If there’s any district in the country where an independent can win, Florida’s Congressional District 23 is it, right here, right now.Democratic Party politics appear petty when compared to the growing economic and environmental crises we face in Florida. For many people, this feels like year 10 of a Great Depression in jobs, incomes and savings. It’s why so many people voted for Bernie Sanders and so many others for Donald Trump. They know the system is broken, and that incremental change will change nothing.Although Wasserman Schultz says climate change and sea-level rise are real, she then votes for billions of dollars in federal subsidies for the fossil-fuel industry and big agribusinesses, the industries contributing most to climate change. And she votes for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal subsidies for the Big Sugar industry, which along with those factory farms, are most responsible for polluting our waterways with toxic algae, endangering public health, harming tourism and threatening our oceans and aquifers. I didn’t leave the Democratic Party as much as it left me. It’s much the same with the Republican Party. Both went so establishment and corporate that they abandoned the American people. That’s why although I’m running as an independent, I’m still the real New Deal Democrat in the race, and the candidate most in line with Teddy Roosevelt’s Republican progressive vision of trust-busting to protect workers and consumers, and to conserve our natural environment. Like during the Roosevelts’ era, our generation needs to tame capitalism without destroying it in order to liberate people while providing them with meaningful work in a dynamic economy.
UPDATE From TimTonight was to be the one and only debate in our independent campaign for Congress against Debbie Wasserman Schultz and a Republican opponent. Unfortunately, the debate has been cancelled.First, Debbie Wasserman Schultz did not even have the good grace to respond to the invitation made by Broward College on behalf of their students. No response at all.And here’s an indication of Wasserman Schultz’s absolute hypocrisy: Last night she attended a debate of candidates for Florida governor at Broward College! Apparently, everyone else should be expected to debate opponents and answer to voters, but not Debbie.The debate was going to proceed without Wasserman Schultz. My Republican opponent, Joe Kaufman, had already accepted Broward College’s invitation. But Kaufman cancelled this morning, even though the replacement moderator was a Republican who has served as press secretary to a number of prominent Florida Republicans, including Florida’s Attorney General.Broward College felt compelled to cancel the entire event, rather than letting me take the stage alone, as the only candidate in this congressional district willing to debate.It’s absolutely revolting that candidates for Congress, including a sitting Congresswoman who proclaim their fidelity to democracy, are actually afraid of the voters and have such little respect in particular for younger voters. They believe that college students and other young voters will not turn out to vote. And by not speaking to young voters, they are hoping it has that effect.My opponents have also rejected a Town Hall invitation from March for Our Lives, a group formed by high school students in the aftermath of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shootings in Parkland, Florida earlier this year. And once again, Debbie Wasserman Schultz did not even respond to the invitation. That’s vintage Debbie. If you have a $5000 check from a political action committee, Debbie will make time for you. If not, her staff won’t even return your calls or debate invitations.Wasserman Schultz and Kaufman both pretend to care about school safety, the lousy conditions in our public schools, and the concerns of college students. Yet, when push comes to shove, they both avoid invitations from students to appear in public, debate the issues, and answer their questions.As a professor, I know all too well what a difficult job market this is, even for college graduates, and the burdens they carry in student debt. That’s why I have an agenda for students, one that includes a plan to reduce interest rates on existing student debt and even to forgive much outstanding student debt-- the same way the Federal Reserve helped Wall Street banks and hedge funds following the 2008 financial collapse. I support tuition-free public colleges, and we also have a plan for voluntary national service for high school grads that would provide tuition-free higher education at any school, public or private, after three years of servic-- the same kind of deal my dad’s generation got after World War II with the G.I. Bill of Rights. A national service program would provide opportunities in civilian conservation in national forests and coastal waters, cultural production in the arts and music, and improving all kinds of infrastructure-- just like in President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. I also support Medicare For All, which would greatly help young people, many of whom presently lack any health insurance.None of my opponents have any real agenda to address the concerns of our youth. No wonder why they run away from public forums and debates at our colleges and with young voters. The corrupt establishment is making such a mess of our world, I fear what the future will be like for our children.This is what our campaign is fighting against: cowards who do not believe in democracy and who show such disrespect and disdain for young voters, and for people of all ages.This is what our campaign is fighting for: a New Deal for all Americans!
