Parkland school shooting survivor Cameron Kasky came out swinging at Jack Schlossberg, John F. Kennedy’s only grandson, on Tuesday as he announced his entry into an already-crowded race for a congressional seat in New York.
Kasky, 25, filed his candidacy to run as a Democrat to replace Jerry Nadler, who represents New York’s 12th District and will retire next year after serving in Congress since 1992, according to Federal Election Commission records.
He formally launched his bid Tuesday morning with a colorful campaign video and an interview with Vanity Fair, in both of which he acknowledged his faceoff with a member of one of America’s most storied families.
“Please donate to me online, all of my opponents have a lot of very rich friends and I can’t necessarily say the same about myself,” Kasky said in his campaign video. The Kennedy family’s fortune was last estimated at $1.2 billion by Forbes in 2015.
Schlossberg, a 32-year-old social media star and the son of former Biden-appointed ambassador Caroline Kennedy and artist Edwin Schlossberg, announced his own candidacy for the hotly contested seat earlier in November, paired with a lengthy profile in The New York Times and a massive social media rollout—which Kasky seemingly took aim at during his interview with Vanity Fair.
“Schlossberg is amazing at getting views and clicks. He understands the social media game in a way that I could only hope to catch up to,” Kasky told the outlet.
“But at the end of the day, social media is not how you’re going to win. You are going to win by having clear, moral, and equitable positions on the issues that are concerning to Americans.”
Schlossberg’s campaign, while generating significant buzz, has so far drawn ire from critics on the right and the left for leaning too heavily on his social media presence rather than specific policy stances. He’s amassed almost 800,000 followers on Instagram and about 900,000 on TikTok.
The Harvard Law School and business school graduate unveiled 12 ways he promised to serve NY-12, which is in Manhattan, including through “optimism, positivity, courage, strength” and other adjectives—none of which left critics all that impressed.
“Great branding, cute and sticky catch phrase. Horrible execution lmfao. Creativity? Courage? Youre trying to go to Congress not NYU,” wrote Democratic political strategist Maya Luna in one X post.
Kasky, a Florida native who briefly attended Columbia University before dropping out, referenced that criticism in his own social media post on Tuesday, where he listed his core political stances: “Medicare For All; Stop Funding Genocide; Gun Violence Prevention and Fight the AI Oligrarchs.”
“I am not sharing my positions because they’re convenient, I’m sharing them because you deserve politicians who believe in something,” Kasky wrote on X.
“Donate to an actual platform and learn more.”
Schlossberg and Kasky actually have a history of being frenemies. In July, Schlossberg was a guest on Kasky and Tim Miller’s podcast on The Bulwark, FYPod. During the interview, Kasky aired what he joked was “dirty laundry.”
“I was talking to the woman who I was in love, the one semester I was at Columbia, fall semester 2019, and she said ‘you know I had a big crush on Jack,’” Kasky said. “So I started to poll women I admire in my life to see how they felt.”
Kasky then told a chuckling Schlossberg that all three women polled admitted they had a crush on the Kennedy heir.
“I feel like we kind of look alike,” Schlossberg replied. “Maybe we attract a certain type of person who’s looking for a certain type of thing.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Kasky and Schlossberg for comment.
The two young men aren’t the only public figures eyeing the open seat. Last week, CNN reported that George Conway, the ex-husband of former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, is weighing a run as an independent.
The post JFK’s Grandson Called Out by Friend–Turned–Foe appeared first on The Daily Beast.
