An Indiana civil rights lawyer is trying to flip a deep-red district without bashing Trump
- Dan Canon, a civil rights lawyer running for the House in a red southern Indiana district, is hoping to ride a wave of Democratic energy in the Midwest.
- Canon is painting himself as an authentic everyman who appeals both to progressive students and blue-collar swing voters.
Dan Canon, a Democrat and civil rights lawyer running to flip a red southern Indiana House seat, says he learned to care about other people's problems through music.
The son of a single mom, Canon dropped out of high school when he was 17 and put himself through college while working as a music teacher.
"When you're a musician people have a way of opening up to you and talking to you about stuff that they wouldn't normally talk about," Canon told Business Insider. "I developed a care for the world beyond me."
So, Canon - the first in his family to get a college degree - went on to law school and joined a small Louisville civil rights practice where he got involved in some high-profile constitutional rights cases, including Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the Supreme Court held same-sex marriage is a constitutionally protected right.
But after President Donald Trump swept Canon's home district by 27 points last November and wealthy real estate investor Trey Hollingsworth took the district's congressional seat, Canon decided to enter the political fray.
'People want something different'
With Trump's approval ratings currently underwater in Indiana - a late October poll had his approval at 41% and his disapproval at 45% in the state - and a surging political engagement among progressives, Canon said 2018 is a prime opportunity to flip Indiana's ninth district seat.
He's quick to point out the differences between himself and Hollingsworth, a Tennessee native who self-financed his 2016 campaign. Canon is painting himself as an authentic alternative - a non-politician politician. He's a lifelong ninth district resident, he's lived paycheck to paycheck, and he understands the problems the people in his district are facing, he said.
"I dropped out of high school and I've been divorced and remarried and all that good stuff, just done normal, human things," he said. "I am not somebody who has led a politician's life."
Hollingsworth, who supported repealing the Affordable Care Act - an unpopular vote in Indiana - has "never known anybody, most likely, who's had to go bankrupt or died because they couldn't pay their medical bills," Canon said.
In some ways, the liberal Democrat plans to capitalize on his outsider status in the same way that Trump did.
"Whatever you think about the elections in 2016, it was sort of a referendum on the status quo and it's like the great Etch-a-Sketch of American politics has been picked up and shaken," Canon said. "I think people want something different."
Canon won't shy away from his record of civil rights advocacy, which has included suing Trump for inciting violence against protesters.
"Political strategists think that as a Democrat you gotta run the safest, most milquetoast, most middle of the road, vanilla ice cream campaign that you can possibly run," he said. "I just don't think that that works when you're trying to get people to the polls."
But this doesn't mean he's running on anti-Trump sentiment. He'll need to win over a good number of Trump supporters and argues that the way to do this is to offer a clear, positive vision for the change he'll bring. And if he can gain the trust of voters who might not support all of his policy positions, and who generally distrust politicians, he has a shot.
"I've seen support for me come in - financial support and moral support - from people I know voted for Donald Trump," he said. "It's because I've been here long enough in my community to demonstrate to people that I'm there for them, they can trust me."
On Monday, the campaign released a new ad, framing himself as an a-political advocate for "real people."
'Quite brilliantly gerrymandered'
The ideologically diverse ninth district, which consists largely of middle- and working-class white voters, has swung back and forth between Democratic and Republican control over the last several decades. Former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton held the seat for 34 years.
But Canon says the Republican supermajority in the state capitol has "quite brilliantly gerrymandered" the district, using reliably Republican communities to erase Bloomington, the "brightest blue spot in Indiana."
Indeed, a June Associated Press analysis found that Indiana has some of the most gerrymandered House districts in the country. Republicans control seven of the nine US House seats, the governor's office, 70% of state House seats, and 41 of 50 state senate seats, despite a more even divide between Democratic and Republican voters in the state.
Both Canon and his top Democratic opponent, Liz Watson, a lawyer from the liberal stronghold of Bloomington who has worked in Democratic politics, outraised Hollingsworth in the last quarter, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently put the race on a list of targets to flip the House in 2018.
Andy Downs, a political scientist at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, told Business Insider the two competitive Democrats - and the amount of money they've managed to raise - make this the most interesting US House race in the state.
Whether the race remains interesting depends in large part on how much money they continue to raise, he said.
While the May primary is still many months away, Canon is hoping his roots in a more conservative part of the district will help him win key swing voters, and argues that candidates from Bloomington, the home of Indiana University, are "toxic" to the rest of the district.
"Democrats in other parts of the district tend to distrust the Democrats from Bloomington," he said.
And Downs said Watson's liberal home county may be up for grabs in the primary.
"His position on issues is going to play well there and having a couple hundred thousand dollars means he can afford to play there," Downs said.