Blue America has endorsed Tim Canova again in his primary battle for the Broward County/Miami-Dade congressional seat the corrupt New Dem Debbie Wassermann Schultz has been sitting in since 2005. Last year-- despite all the backing from the Democratic Party and an unlimited corporate-financed war chest-- Wasserman Schultz had the battle of her battle career and only managed a narrow 28,279 (56.8%) to 21,504 (43.2%) win over Tim. Thursday, IVN reported that Tim was doing exactly what serious progressives do to beat entrenched incumbents: run again. It’s how Alan Grayson won his seat and how Donna Edwards won hers. It’s how Tim will win his. IVN put the primary in context by reminding their readers that Wassermann Schultz, instead offending to her constituents’ needs, has been preoccupied with her own “controversy since the 2016 presidential election. Now, embroiled in a criminal investigation, the congresswoman has a 2018 primary challenger: Progressive Democrat Tim Canova. First, she resigned her post as DNC chair after thousands of emails leaked implicating her and other DNC officials in rigging the 2016 presidential primary for Hillary Clinton. Wasserman Schultz is being sued, along with the DNC, by a group of Bernie Sanders supporters. Members of her office are also under investigation for a cybersecurity breach that involved internal data on members of Congress. Pakistani staffer Imran Awan is accused of stealing data on members of Congress, carrying it off-site, and even blackmailing lawmakers. Wasserman Schultz didn’t fire Awan. Instead, she threatened the Capitol Police chief for not returning equipment that was part of the investigation."
Florida law professor and Progress for All founder Tim Canova, says her behavior is nothing new. In fact, he says she was not only “doing damage as a member of Congress,” but will likely go down as “the worst chair of the [Democratic Party] in history.”…Canova asserts that Wasserman Schultz continues to show contempt for her constituents “and for democracy itself”-- from her campaign against him to the DNC email scandal, lawsuit, and more.“I think she has become the personification of what’s wrong with the Democratic Party, with not just its failure at the polls, but also the disgrace of these scandals,” says Canova.
Anthony Man, covering Tim’s announcement for the Sun-Sentinel reported that “the Canova-Wasserman Schultz rematch will be one of the hottest congressional primaries in South Florida.” Actually, it will probably be on of the hottest anywhere in the country. (You can contribute to Tim’s campaign by tapping on the Blue America thermometer on the right.) Tim, he reported, “already claimed a victory this week over Wasserman Schultz and the Democratic Party establishment. He said the party had dropped plans to have Wasserman Schultz welcome participants to the big, annual state Democratic Party fundraising dinner on Saturday after he complained that he wouldn’t get equal time.”
He said he’d champion progressive values and advocate policies that would aid the majority of citizens, rather than the richest sliver of American society and big corporations. He said it’s wrong that there are seniors in South Florida who live in near poverty in the “richest country on the face of the earth.”Just 18 months ago, few people had heard of Canova, a Hollywood resident and professor of law and public finance at Nova Southeastern University. He was the undisputed underdog and Wasserman Schultz was chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.But she was wounded by turmoil surrounding the 2016 presidential primaries, with supporters of Bernie Sanders accusing her of favoring Hillary Clinton, the eventual nominee.Canova harnessed the energy-- and online campaign contributions-- from Sanders fans who detested Wasserman Schultz to become the biggest threat she faced during her political career.He raised $3.8 million for last year’s campaign from more than 80,000 individual donors running against Wassermann Schultz much the way Sanders campaigned against Clinton.Canova accused Wasserman Schultz of championing the interests of large campaign contributors at the expense of everyday voters.
Tim’s own announcement to his supporters arrived Thursday night by e-mail, reminding them that “ Last year’s race was an epic David versus Goliath. When I jumped into the race, Wasserman Schultz was the chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and she had the support of the entire Washington political establishment and the largest corporations and Wall Street banks. I put in $15,000 of my own meager savings, launched our website and social media, and made the most important pledge of my campaign: that I would not take a penny from any corporate interests. Thanks to all of you, I kept that pledge and we raised nearly $3.8 million in small online donations, more than 200,000 individual contributions with an average donation of about $17-- reportedly breaking records for the highest percentage of small donations of any campaign in history. I am renewing that pledge for this campaign: I will not take a penny from any corporate interests and I will not take money from any political actions committee (PACs).”
Campaign finance and political reform will be meaningless without real election integrity reforms. Throughout the 2016 election, millions of fellow citizens lost faith in our election system in the face of massive suppression of voters and apparent wrongdoing in the counting of ballots in numerous races, including several key primaries where it seemed Bernie Sanders was crushing it, only to fall short in the official counts. We need to protect our voting systems, make them more transparent, and verify the votes through the counting of paper ballots in public. With your help, I pledge to raise the funds we need to pay for a recount in my race next year, no matter the outcome in this election! We will protect the vote, verify the ballots, and demand transparency! Our political system has been rigged for too long against ordinary folks like you and me. I am running again to represent those who Franklin Roosevelt referred to as the forgotten men and women in our society-- those who have been left behind by a political system awash in big corporate money. In the coming days and weeks, I will outline my agenda for progressive reform. Rest assured it is the same People’s Agenda that I have been advocating and working for as an activist and a law professor since I was in my early 20s. …More than anything, our generation needs jobs and economic opportunity, not from trickle down policies, but a green and solar New Deal approach that rebuilds our country and helps the people from the bottom up. We need to stop privatizing everything, we need to reinvigorate the capabilities of our public sectors to do great things. This is the progressive tradition we must all embrace. We know that it’s not truly progressive if it’s not “progress for all.”
