Suddenly, Tim Canova is the most famous primary challenger in America.

With Bernie Sanders’ unexpected endorsement on national television, Canova, a lawyer from Hollywood, Fla., got a dramatic boost for his liberal challenge to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. In three days since Sanders endorsed him, Canova’s phone has been ringing off the hook, he’s been all over the national news, and his campaign is suddenly grabbing the attention of national Democrats.


Canova’s sudden fame offers a new measure of the grassroots power of the Sanders coalition, testing whether a Sanders endorsement of a progressive challenger against a major establishment figure can make a difference not just in a local congressional race, but one where that establishment figure is an entrenched incumbent who has never before drawn a primary challenger.

“Aside from money, which is always helpful, I think the media exposure is helpful, too,” Canova said Monday after appearing on all three cable news stations: CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. “There’s not just a money gap between Wasserman Schultz and me, but also a name recognition gap, which makes a difference in a primary with low turnout. She doesn’t have to do a good job, but people have heard of her and voted for her before, so media exposure does help closing that gap.”

Canova, a 56-year-old law professor who once taught Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, says he never expected Sanders to get involved in his race. In fact, Canova adds, he never expected to make a long-shot run against Wasserman Schultz in the first place. But he is a Sanders-style progressive who once served on a financial advisory board for Sanders. They share beliefs on major issues including trade and campaign finance, which Canova believes has a corrupting influence on Wasserman Schultz and other officeholders. Those two issues became his main motivations for leaping into the race.

As Sanders starts endorsing candidates for down-ballot office and laying groundwork for a legacy beyond his presidential campaign, Canova represents his most audacious bet — that his legions of followers can even fuel challenges to sitting officeholders, which typically succeed just 1 percent of the time.

While other Sanders endorsees for Congress and state legislature are incumbents or candidates for open seats, Canova is trying to take down a powerful and by all accounts still-popular sitting officeholder in Wasserman Schultz. There has been no public polling in the district, but its Democratic voters gave Sanders just 30 percent of the presidential primary vote against Hillary Clinton.

But Sanders’ email list, which fueled his longer-than-expected challenge to Clinton, has truly game-changing potential when its donors are directed toward smaller races.

Sanders’ direct endorsement generated over $250,000 for Canova in 24 hours — a sum many House candidates take months to raise, and one that many anti-incumbent challengers like Canova never reach. It reflects both Sanders’ legacy-building goals and declining relations between the presidential insurgent and his adopted party.

“I think it’s really a reflection of the deterioration in relations between the two of them, but I don’t think that deterioration was enough for an endorsement,” Canova said. “I think he had to take a look at the challenger and see that I line up very closely with him policy-wise.”

Canova had already managed to draft off enthusiasm for Sanders’ campaign (and Wasserman Schultz’s perceived encouragement of Hillary Clinton from her DNC perch) before the endorsement, raising over $1 million before this week, a breathtaking amount for an incumbent primary challenger.

Sanders added to that this week.

“The political revolution is not just about electing a president,” Sanders’ campaign wrote in a weekend fundraising email for Canova. “We need a Congress with members who believe, like Bernie, that we cannot change a corrupt system by taking its money.”

Wasserman Schultz said in a statement that “even though Senator Sanders has endorsed my opponent I remain, as I have been from the beginning, neutral in the Presidential Democratic primary. I look forward to working together with him for Democratic victories in the fall."

"I am so proud to serve the people of Florida's 23rd district and I am confident that they know that I am an effective fighter and advocate on their behalf in Congress,” Wasserman Schultz continued.

Canova, whose specialty as a law professor is international trade, said he decided to run against Wasserman Schultz when he said he saw “a pattern of taking huge amounts of corporate money and voting for those corporate interests over those of her constituents.”

In particular, Canova cited Wasserman Schultz’s support for President Barack Obama’s fast-track authority on trade legislation, saying he tried to lobby the incumbent’s office against it, but “could not get any response from her office whatsoever.” Wasserman Schultz has not had a primary challenger since she took office.

“I and some others believed she should get challenged in the primary, but didn’t think it was going to be me,” said Canova, who joined the race in January. “I kept waiting for someone to do it, but no one did.”

Bernie Sanders is putting Tim Canova in the spotlight. | AP

Since then, Canova has leveraged his opponent’s notoriety among Sanders supporters and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars online from them, even before Sanders endorsed him. Like Sanders, Canova got into a spat with his party over access to voter data. Though the Florida Democratic Party backed down, Canova used the echoes of Sanders’ fight with the DNC, which riled up his campaign and supporters, to raise good money.

“We sent out emails to our donors [about the issue] and we posted about it online and social media,” Canova said. “In one day, we raised $18,000. It was a good day for us. … But then they did back down. They were feeling the heat.”

Now, Sanders’ full endorsement is sending significantly more money Canova’s way. He is the fourth House candidate — after Lucy Flores in Nevada, Zephyr Teachout in New York and Pramila Jayapal in Washington — to see major, six-figure fundraising leaps after Sanders emailed his list for them. Sanders’ intervention helped Flores raise over $480,000 in April, significantly more than she had raised in the previous 11 months combined. Another eight state legislative candidates benefited from Sanders' email list on Tuesday.

But Canova would need much more than his connection to the Vermont senator to lift him to victory over an entrenched incumbent. Sanders did not crack even one-third of his primary vote in Wasserman Schultz’s district.

Canova says he has the ability to bring on Clinton voters, too.

“If you look at Clinton’s positions, you can see that she’s now against TPP, while Wasserman Schultz voted for it,” Canova said. (What Wasserman Schultz actually voted for was TPA, the so-called "fast track" trade negotiation authority, not the trade deal itself.) “Clinton is critical of payday lending loans, but Wasserman Schultz has doubled down on payday lending. Those who have voted for Hillary Clinton had to vote for Debbie Wasserman Schultz, too, because there wasn’t a choice. Now there’s a choice.”

Canova said that even as his race has entered the national spotlight, he plans to keep hitting on local issues, especially “the jobs crisis,” payday lending loans and the “corrupting” influence of money in politics.

While Sanders’ time in the national spotlight may wind down after the July Democratic National Convention, Canova’s race will just be kicking into high gear for a late August primary. Canova said he has not been in touch with Sanders’ team about campaigning together, nor is he “counting on it.” But it has already launched his campaign to a prominence few primary challengers ever enjoy