Florida Congressional race sees LI-bred Democrats face off
Tim Canova, right, a candidate for Congress in South Florida's 23rd Congressional District, is running a primary against Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. Both candidates are transplants from Nassau County, she from Lido Beach and Melville, and he from Freeport and then Merrick. Credit: AP / Richard Drew / Courtesy Tim Canova
The most significant primary race between Long Island-bred candidates this season seems to be brewing more than 1,000 miles away, in South Florida.
Tim Canova, a law professor raised in Merrick, has gained national notice by challenging Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who grew up in Lido Beach and Melville, for the Democratic nomination in Florida’s 23rd Congressional District.
The high-profile incumbent has been chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee since 2011. Last week, when Wasserman-Schultz returned to Nassau County to address the Long Beach Democratic Committee, demonstrators showed up with protest signs and shouts of criticism.
Attendees objected to, among other things, her support for fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and resistance to predatory-lending strictures pushed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Some rally-goers raised Canova’s name, taking his side in a dispute over access to party voter data.
If differences between the guests and rally-goers at the Bridgeview Yacht Club in Island Park reflected those in the Aug. 30 Florida primary, they also mirrored a heated national debate between supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and backers of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Canova told Newsday on Friday that he sees the economy and a paucity of good jobs for ordinary working people as “the paramount issue in why people are fed up with incumbents.” While he applauds Wasserman-Schultz, 49, on women’s issues and gay rights, he said, he objects to her fundraising practices and calls for a push against corporate influence. His campaign website calls her a “quintessential corporate machine politician.”
Canova, 55, was born in Freeport and raised in Merrick. He graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore where, he’s quick to note, he was on a varsity track squad that won a state cross-country championship. After leaving for college and law school, he was a practicing attorney and activist for progressive causes, and at one time worked in Washington for Sen. Paul Tsongas.
“I do think one of the clear, primary issues is to clean up politics and campaign finance,” Canova said. The slogan on his website goes: “It’s not progressive if it’s not progress for all.”
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
