We're Gonna Vote You Out: Parkland Students To Iowa's Steve King

The kids are coming for Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King. He’s not the only pro-gun politician student activists from Parkland, Florida, and elsewhere want to see voted out of office in their campaign for gun control, but King didn’t do himself any favors when he tied Emma González, who survived the Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, to Communist Cuba.

King’s post on Facebook was met with fierce blowback from students and others. González and other Stoneman Douglas shooting survivors, like David Hogg, have put a national face on the gun control debate. Seventeen of their classmates and staff were gunned down by a former student armed with an AR-15 assault weapon, and the students have channeled their grief into a massive student movement.

They have demanded, among other things, bans on assault weapons, bump stocks and high-capacity magazines, stronger background checks, and raising the minimum age to buy guns to 21.

To make their point, students across the country walked out of their classrooms on March 14, a month after the Parkland shooting, for 17 minutes, one minute for each person whose life was cut short in the shooting. Last weekend, they converged on Washington, D.C., and cities across the country in March for Our Lives rallies.

The students are playing off that riff with Town Hall for Our Lives, a call for every member of Congress to meet with constituents on April 7, while they’re back in their districts for a spring recess that continues through April 9. The citizen-sourced Town Hall Project, which maps listening sessions held by members of Congress, is supporting the student activists.

If the official declines to hold a meeting, the project organizers propose a town hall meeting with that person’s opponent in the midterm elections.

The students blistered King for his González post, which called attention to the fact that she wore a patch of a Cuban flag on her olive-green jacket.

"This is how you look when you claim Cuban heritage yet don't speak Spanish and ignore the fact that your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self defense." King wrote on Facebook.

“We’re gonna vote you out, Steve,” Parkland student Jacklyn Corin tweeted.

King got into a spat with David Hogg, one of the Parkland activists, about the call to raise the minimum age to buy a gun.

“If you are a teenager & believe you won’t be responsible enough to own a gun until 21, why should you vote before 21?”

“Maybe because so many of us are gunned down before we even become 21,” Hogg responded, adding that King proves “exactly why so many Americans are done with politicians like you who only have the goal of dividing America to make us weaker.”

Hogg also tweeted at Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, asking him to defend González and respond to King’s post. Her “family fled Cuba to escape totalitarianism and live in freedom just like your family,” he tweeted.

In eight terms in Congress, King has been strident in his opposition to immigrants. King critics charge his comments at least border on xenophobia. Among other things, King has said immigrants crossing the Mexican border are drug couriers who “have calves the size of cantaloupes” and also suggested that non-white “subgroups of people” have contributed little to civilization.

Voters in King’s conservative northwest Iowa district have returned him to Congress with little opposition, and though he’s expected to win a June 5 primary contest against Cyndi Hanson, he could face his greatest test yet in the Nov. 6 general election.

Among four Democrats seeking the right to challenge him is former professional baseball player J.D. Scholten, a progressive who outraised King 2-to-1 in campaign contributions. Other Democrats seeking the right to challenge King are Paul Dahl, Leann Jacobsen and John Paschen.

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Photo of Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King by Scott Olson/Getty Images