Eric Swalwell Is Running for President on Gun Safety [View all]

[DonViejo]

The California congressman is partnering with a Parkland student and says he isn’t afraid of the NRA.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE
7:27 AM ET

There are more long-shot Democrats running for president this year than there have been total candidates in previous campaigns—and next week, Eric Swalwell is joining the pack. The California congressman and frequent cable-news guest on all things related to President Donald Trump and Russia will announce his presidential plans in an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. But he won’t be running on Russia, or on the continuing fallout from the Mueller report and the Barr letter. Swalwell will center his campaign on gun control.

Helping him do that will be Cameron Kasky, a survivor of the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who became prominent in the March for Our Lives student movement. Swalwell has written about being inspired by the youth movement in his call to ban all assault weapons, and Kasky was his guest at the State of the Union address in February. Together, they’re organizing a town hall that Swalwell will host in Coral Springs, Florida, on Monday. Swalwell announced the town hall on Wednesday afternoon, but made no mention in the public announcement of his political plans.

When I reached out to Swalwell on Wednesday evening, he wouldn’t confirm the news, but he didn’t leave much doubt that he intends to run for president. “We are doing a town hall in Parkland,” he told me. “And I do believe that gun safety has to be a top 2020 issue.”

Swalwell, a fourth-term congressman from Northern California who’s been involved in politics since he won a city-council seat as a college senior at the University of Maryland, is 38 years old. He has been building up to a run for months, with his staff stepping up outreach to donors in recent weeks. But the gun-control focus has developed quietly. Last week, he invited Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Gun Safety, to join him at an annual event with veterans at a shooting range. He tweeted a photo of himself firing at a target and one posing with Watts on the range, but made no mention of his political plans.

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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/04/eric-swalwell-says-gun-safety-must-be-top-2020-issue/586483/