The kids from Stoneman Douglas High have focused much of their wrath on their own Senator and next-door neighbor, Marco Rubio. In case you missed it, many of them were wearing “price tags” with “$1.05” on them at the March for Our Lives. It represents the $3.3 million that the NRA has either donated to Rubio or spent on his behalf over the years, divided by the 3.1 million public and private school students in Florida.
But these kids also know that state races matter as well. A Republican state representative may be about to find that out the hard way.
On Saturday, Jaclyn Corin, Stoneman Douglas’ junior class president, discovered that Randy Fine, who represents the 53rd house district in the southern portion of the Space Coast, planned to introduce three bills that would effectively neuter the gun control and school safety passage that passed in early March. Specifically, they would lower the minimum age for buying a gun in Florida back to 18, scrub the three-day waiting period, and make bump stocks legal again. You may know Corin as one of the main organizers of the kids’ field trip to Tallahassee.
Anyone who’s seen these kids in action knows what happened next. Corin sounded the alarm on Twitter.
Within minutes, David Hogg amplified the call.
Fine should be very afraid. These kids are more than willing to face down big tigers like Rubio and the NRA, so it should come as no surprise they’re turning up the heat on small game as well.
As most Florida Kossacks know, the Space Coast has been congested red for a long time. While Trump won this district 53-42, Mitt Romney only won it by 749 votes, per the dKos database. So on paper, this district is winnable.
And it turns out that there is a chance Fine will end up paying the ultimate price for kowtowing to the NRA. While digging more into this for a piece at Liberal America, I found out that there’s a Democrat running here—Phil Moore. His first tweets after setting up his account made it clear that unlike Fine, he actually wants to do something to keep kids safe.
No response from Fine yet. But he’s been put on notice—these kids are not going away.