Cameron Kasky could become the youngest member of Congress if he pulls off a win in the crowded race to replace New York’s retiring 12th District Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler, 78, next year. But despite being in his mid-twenties, the longtime political activist is no stranger to the spotlight and taking bold action to push for change.
As a survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, which killed 17 people and injured 18, Kasky went on to co-found the student-led group Never Again MSD, advocating for stricter gun regulations to prevent future violence. Kasky also helped organize the nationwide March for Our Lives demonstration in March 2018.
While that experience gave him a national profile and allowed him to meet people across the country, the 25-year-old said it also made him lose hope for a time. “I had to watch so many people burst into tears right before my eyes and tell me that I gave them hope. But I had lost hope myself,” Kasky, who identifies as a democratic socialist, told Newsweek in a Wednesday Zoom interview.
But from that experience of becoming jaded, he’s now emerged determined to continue the fight. “I lacked the understanding that change takes longer than we thought it would,” he said.
Now, Kasky aims to bring his efforts to the halls of Congress, focusing his campaign on promoting an unabashedly progressive agenda. Those goals include passing Medicare-for-All, focusing on affordability, abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, fighting the AI oligarchs and ending all U.S. funding to Israel, among others.
Courtsey of Kasky Campaign
A Progressive Shift for Democrats?
The young progressive’s agenda appears aligned with the moment for many on the left—particularly within New York City.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani just won a significant upset victory in the nation’s largest city’s election, resoundingly defeating former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo first in the Democratic primary and then again in the general election last month. That victory came after a staunchly progressive campaign focused on affordability, taxing the wealthy and criticizing Israel’s war in Gaza, with millions in billionaire money spent against him to prop up his opponent.
“The people in this district want progressive leadership in the country, and that is my agenda,” Kasky told Newsweek. As is the case with many Democratic voters, Kasky believes the party needs to reprioritize and change strategy to meet the moment.
Kasky said he will “create new opportunities to be disruptive because the Democrats’ job right now is to be an opposition party,” warning that more traditional Democrats “are failing to put up a meaningful opposition” to President Donald Trump and Republicans. He said Democratic lawmakers need to be willing “to put your body” and “your political career on the line.”
“You cannot be a tame politician right now just because you think that’s what’s going to get you re-elected,” he said.
The progressive shift comes as current Democratic Party leaders are historically unpopular, according to multiple recent polls, as many progressive voters look for major reforms and changes. Meanwhile, November polling by Data for Progress showed that Medicare-for-All, long maligned by critics as far-left and socialist, is backed by nearly two-thirds of voters, including a majority of independents and nearly half of Republicans. And poll results published by Gallup in September showed favorable views of socialism hit a new high of 66 percent among Democrats.
“The Democratic Party needs to catch up. And part of my agenda is making sure that the Democratic Party does not leave immigrants behind. It does not leave people broke because they’re seeking healthcare. And it does not leave people around the world subject to genocidal wars using our money,” Kasky said.
On Abolishing ICE
Trump campaigned heavily on cracking down on undocumented immigrants and has pushed hard on that campaign pledge. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), more than two million immigrants have left the U.S. this year, including 1.9 million who have voluntarily self-deported and over 593,000 forced deportations. Although Trump’s message during the campaign largely focused on targeting criminals, the crackdown by ICE has hit many with legal visas, permanent residency status, and even some U.S. citizens.
“ICE infringes upon the rights not only of immigrants who deserve to be safe and prosperous in this country because of how much they contribute to our society and to our economy. But they’re also an excuse for the president to have a private police force to punish his enemies and infringe upon the rights of Americans,” Kasky said.
The congressional hopeful said reforms and defunding the federal agency won’t go far enough. “We need immigration resources in this country that make it easier for people to become citizens, not harder,” Kasky said.
“We are going to be facing an issue where we see net negative migration in this country, and if you look at the other countries that have net negative migration, that is not a group of countries that the richest country in the world should be grouped with,” he warned.
On Cutting Funds to Israel
Kasky sees his opposition to funding Israel from a personal perspective. As a Jewish American, he believes Israel’s actions against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank make people like him unsafe.
“The way for Israelis to be safe and the way for Jewish people around the world to be safe is for this to end, for the largest,” he said. “I want Jewish people around the world to be safe. I am Jewish people. I would like to be safe. And what the state of Israel is doing in our name is not only completely unacceptable, it is bad for our people and will have consequences that a lot of individuals are willfully blind to.”
He said his campaign aims to “cut off all funding to the state of Israel and place sanctions until their expansionist violence is completely rooted out.”
“This is not a defensive war that the state of Israel is trying to convince us that it is through one of the weakest propaganda campaigns I’ve seen in history,” he said. “Placing tough sanctions on the state of Israel and using our influence to end the genocide that they have been carrying out is what is best for Jewish people around the world.”
Many Israeli critics, as well as international human rights organizations, including a United Nations independent commission, have accused the Mediterranean nation of committing genocide against Palestinians. Israel and its supporters strongly reject these allegations, saying they are defending themselves against antisemitic extremists who seek the destruction of their people.
While the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians goes back decades, the recent war erupted on October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out attacks on Israel that left some 1,200 dead and took 251 hostages captive. In response, Israel launched a military campaign that has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry, as cited by the Associated Press. Despite a ceasefire agreement implemented in October with the help of the Trump administration, Israeli attacks in Gaza have persisted and the death toll has continued to climb.
A Crowded New York Primary
Although Kasky is one of the most high-profile figures throwing his hat into the ring for Nadler’s seat, the Democratic primary is crowded with at least 10 declared candidates, according to The New York Times. Whichever candidate manages to win the primary is expected to be the next representative for the 12th District, as Nadler easily won reelection in 2024 with just over 80 percent of the vote.
Other prominent candidates in the race include Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of former President John F. Kennedy; New York State Assembly Member Alex Bores; New York City Council Member Erik Bottcher; New York State Assembly Member Micah Lasher; attorney and journalist Jami Floyd; and civil rights attorney Laura Dunn.
But Kasky thinks his proposals set him apart from the others in the race. “Policy. That’s the big one for me,” he said.
“Each of them have maybe spoken about one or two things. But in terms of comprehensive platform, I’m leading on policy, I’m running on policy, and I’m calling on my opponents to be a bit more transparent about what people are going to be voting for,” he said.
Whether his platform and agenda ultimately break through and propel him to Congress will be up to New York’s 12th District voters. The primary date has yet to be announced, but the general election will take place on November 3 next year.