Parkland survivor featured in Bloomberg campaign ad in Florida

A survivor of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., is featured in a new campaign ad for Democratic presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The digital ad, which will air in the Sunshine State, is one of several the campaign is rolling out focused on gun control, a top issue for Bloomberg’s campaign. The former mayor, who has invested heavily in gun control advocacy groups, is dropping millions of dollars for a Super Bowl ad featuring a Houston mother whose son was shot and killed. 

The Florida video features Sari Kaufman, who is now a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which was the site where a gunman shot and killed 17 people in February 2018, an event that helped revive a national conversation on gun control. 

Kaufman, who has since become a gun control activist, said she was encouraged by Bloomberg’s focus on the issue.

“A lot of politicians run away from the issue of gun violence, and Mike runs toward it,” Kaufman says in the Bloomberg ad. 

“Thirty years down the road I’m not going to want my kids to go to school and having to experience the same thing that I experienced,” she adds. “I trust Bloomberg to break the cycle of failure and failure, especially with gun violence bills.”

Bloomberg’s campaign confirmed to Politico that the digital ad would run through March 17, the date of Florida’s primary. 

Bloomberg has put a premium on expanding his footprint in Florida — whose primary doles out 248 pledged delegates — allocating substantial funds to building up staff and releasing ads in the state. The campaign will also start a bus tour focused on gun control in Orlando on Monday.

Bloomberg, a billionaire media mogul, in recent years has invested millions of his own money to support gun control advocacy groups such as Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, and in December released a sweeping plan to combat gun violence.