Cameron Kasky, a survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at a Parkland, FL high school, on Tuesday became the latest candidate to launch a bid for retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler’s Congressional seat.
Kasky, 25, of the Upper West Side, helped found the activist group March for Our Lives after the Parkland shooting on Feb. 14, 2018 that left 17 people dead, and 17 others wounded. He works as a contributor at The Bulwark news site; he told amNewYork his program is on hiatus as he makes his Congressional run.
He announced his candidacy in a video posted on social media on Nov. 18, in which he highlighted a platform that champions universal healthcare, abolishes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and prevents gun violence.
The young candidate said he would vote against continuing to send military aid to Israel in the wake of its war in Gaza, which was ignited by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on, and invasion of, the Jewish state that left more than 1,200 dead and more than 250 people held hostage.
Kasky appears to be positioning himself as a progressive candidate in the Democratic primary to replace Nadler, the 74-year-old representative of the 12th Congressional District covering much of central Manhattan. He suggested he was running for Congress “because there’s no real path forward for most Americans.”
“You and your family are working all week just to spend most of your paycheck on rent and health care,” he says in the video, which shows him walking the streets of the Upper East Side. “Meanwhile, the richest people in our country are telling us that we can’t afford solutions like social housing and Medicare for All.”
Kasky joins an increasingly crowded field running for the 12th District seat that includes Upper West Side Assembly Member Micah Lasher, Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen City Council Member Erik Bottcher, Upper East Side Assembly Member Alex Bores, and Jack Schlossberg — President John F. Kennedy’s grandson.
Kasky also recounted his journey of getting into politics because of the mass shooting, saying the incident did not happen “in spite of the American system, it happened because of it.”
“But out of that tragedy, my classmates and I were able to get millions of people all across the country to take to the streets and call for real change,” Kasky said of the March for Our Lives movement.
He pointed to his experience of asking then-Florida U.S. Sen., and now Secretary of State, Marco Rubio if he would reject money from the National Rifle Association (NRA) shortly after the Parkland shooting in 2018. Rubio ultimately did not say he would no longer accept NRA donations.
After graduating from Parkland, Kasky enrolled at Columbia University in 2019, bringing him to New York City. He lived in Morningside Heights for two years before relocating to Chelsea.
Like many of those already running for Nadler’s seat, Kasky is pitching himself as part of a new generation of aspiring lawmakers seeking to take the Democratic Party in a different direction. That appears to be in line with Nadler’s wishes, given that the 32-year Congressional veteran said he is not running for reelection to make way for fresh blood.
