Parkland shooting survivor drops out of key NY race in major shake-up

Democratic activist and shooting survivor Cameron Kasky has opted to leave the crowded race for New York's 12th District and shift his attention to civil rights in the West Bank, according to reports Wednesday.

Kasky, the March for Our Lives co-founder who survived the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, announced that he would not continue his campaign to fill the Manhattan district seat for Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), who announced his retirement in September, Politico reported.

“I am, in my heart, not a politician. I am an activist,” Kasky, who visited the occupied West Bank last month, told Politico.

“The reality that I experienced hiding from the shooter in Parkland, that sense that at any moment somebody can come in with an assault rifle and shoot me, that is the only reality that the Palestinian people know every moment of their lives,” Kasky said.

Multiple candidates are running for the vacancy, including vocal anti-Trump critic, former Republican and The Lincoln Project co-founder George Conway; John F. Kennedy's only grandson, Jack Schlossberg, Assemblymen Alex Bores and Micah Lasher and LGBTQ+ advocate Mathew Shurka.

Councilmember Erik Bottcher was also set to run, but dropped out of the New York District 12 race. He announced in a social post on Instagram that he would instead run for New York State Senate.

Kasky was among several Gen Z and millennial candidates vying for the open seat.

“We launched our campaign pledging to abolish ICE, and this week both Micah Lasher and Alex Bores, my two viable opponents, committed to that as well,” Kasky said. “So I’m very confident that our West Bank human rights plan is going to resonate with those two candidates.”

Kasky has planned to advocate for human rights legislation in the West Bank that he plans to develop with a foreign policy expert and also expects to work with the office of Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) as a "concerned citizen."