The Political Courage of the Parkland Moment

Like all good Florida political hacks, I was closely watching the returns from a high profile primary in Northeast Florida on Tuesday night, though the thing I was curious about something different.  Would a deeply conservative district give a vote of confidence to a legislator who took a big risk and did the right thing...

I remember exactly where I was when I saw the news.  It was February 14, 2018, and Margaret Good had just won a special election to the Florida House the night before in Sarasota, throwing a bit of a shock into the Florida political atmosphere, and I had been talking to Chuck Todd at NBC who wanted to interview her for his afternoon show.  Sitting in the coffee shop on the 10th floor of the Capitol to text her manager what they needed to do for the interview, the person next to me on the couch tapped me on the shoulder and pointed at the TV.

Shooting.  Parkland, Florida.  A high school.  Valentine's Day.   And bad.  Really bad.

 By the end of the day, we knew just how bad.  

14 school kids were murdered. 

3 school personnel were murdered.  

17 more were wounded.  

The worst school shooting in Florida history. 

Like most, I just wanted to vomit.  As is often the response in these moments, I wanted to do something, but felt utterly helpless in the moment.  

I’ve never really known how to talk about the next few weeks.  My role in what happened between February 14th and March 9th of that year was relatively minor, advising the parents as the legislature worked towards passing landmark school safety legislation to honor those whose lives were cut short on that day.   It was a hard three weeks.  I drank a lot, I cried a lot, I prayed a lot, and I hardly slept.  But what I went through was nothing compared to the grief those parents carried in those halls.  

My involvement started when a friend called to ask if I could talk to some students who were coming to Tallahassee about how to deal with the media – and continued when another friend asked if I would talk with one of the fathers, Max Schachter, whose son Alex was murdered that day, as he prepared to testify before a legislative committee that was looking into how Florida could respond.  

This led to me taking on the self-described role of sherpa for the families who were working on passing legislation to change the laws around school safety, which consisted of helping them get from place to place, writing statements, dealing with the media, and gathering political intelligence.  Thankfully, my other clients saw the purpose in this, and largely let me focus on the families instead of their work – and after narrow/bipartisan votes in both the House and the Senate, Governor Scott signed the law into effect on March 9th. 

There are real heroes in this story.   Governor Scott put his shoulder into it.  As I have told many a reporter on thie subject - sure, as a Democrat, I have plenty of disagreements with Rick Scott political philosophy, but the Parkland bill never happens without him, and you will never see me do anything but praise his work during that period.

The Senate President, Bill Galvano, toured the school and said we were going to do something.   The House Speaker, Richard Corcoran, made sure the votes were there to pass it.   Now Congressman Jared Moskowitz, then in the State House, lobbied hard to make the bill more bipartisan.  In the Senate, any single vote could have changed the outcome – and there, three Senate Democrats broke with their caucus, Lauren Book, Bill Montford, and Kevin Rader – joining Rob Bradley, a now retired Republican Senator from the Jacksonville area in a district Trump won by 35 points, to provide the deciding votes to pass it.   

Many others did the hard work of quietly lobbying their colleagues, and counting votes.  In my view, everyone who voted yes showed courage. 

More importantly, every parent of a lost child stood together, united in grief, but united in turning their grief into purpose.  These 17 parents, from every possible ideological background, supported a common mission.   They understood that if any single one of them opposed the bill, it almost surely would have failed.   Their unity sent a clear message:  if we can all agree to this, so can you – even if this is politically a hard vote.

That is the point I want to write about today.

There was real peril in this vote.  Most of the yes votes came from members who represented very safe partisan districts, meaning their threats came from the edges of their party, not from the middle.  This was a middle-ground bill, a bipartisan product cobbled together, and was loudly opposed by the edges of both parties.  A yes vote meant members who supported the bill were going to have to go to meetings and defend their actions.   A yes vote meant they were going to see this vote again – and not in a good way.  A yes vote was a truly defining moment in their career.

A lot of strategists on both sides urged a no vote just on the politics – and others thought a no vote would require everyone to come back to the table and negotiate something different.  Many Democrats who wanted an assault-weapons ban told me they were voting no because they thought - frankly wrongly - if the bill died, there would be a renegotiated version where they could get a ban.  

But that wasn’t how this was ever going to work.  In the end, members were going to get a choice:  this bill, and a green or red button.  Was it perfect?  No.  Was it good?  In my view, yes.  If the bill died, the moment would have been lost.  

For me, it was simple.  The bill had to pass.  It had to pass for those kids who wanted to honor their lost friends.  It had to pass for the parents who had experienced the worst days of their lives.   And it had to pass for everyone who had said “do something” after one of these horrible tragedies.

The vote was going to be close, and while many legislators I respect couldn’t get there, fortunately, 67 Members of the Florida House, and 20 Members of the State Senate, found a way to yes.  Every single one of those 87 could have justified a no vote.  

The Republicans who voted yes voted for increased waiting periods on gun sales, and a higher age limit to purchase a gun, as well as a red flag law.   Democrats who voted yes voted to allow school personnel to carry guns in their school – and voted yes even though most thought the gun restrictions weren’t strong enough.   In each of the respective party bases, these provisions were deeply unpopular.

The men and women who cast that vote understood the risk. They knew it could cost them their career. They knew they were angering core supporters.  They knew it was against their own self-interest.  But they knew doing something for those families was more important than their own ambition.  They rose to the moment, and took the hard vote, knowing it could be the last hard vote they ever take.  

But they didn’t care about those things.  They cared about doing the right thing.

And for the first four years after the bill’s passage, their courage was rewarded.  Not a single legislator who voted for that bill lost their seat after being attacked for their vote.  Not one.

 But this summer, it looked like there was a chance that could change.

One of those yes votes came from a freshman legislator from Ormond Beach, Tom Leek, and six years later, Leek was in the fight of his political life:  a bruising primary to serve his community in the State Senate.  

The race Leek was in was historic.  More than 15 million dollars was spent in the race - a number that would have made this State Senate race the 3rd most expensive congressional race in the country this year.  The ads were tough on both sides, and many of those ads attacking Leek  came after him for his vote on the Parkland bill.

This was a very conservative district, and Leek, very much an iron-clad conservative, had over the years voted for some bipartisan initiatives, including the Parkland bill.   If he lost, I feared, so would the political will to do anything like that again in the near future.  

Millions were spent casting Leek as a bad Republican, and a “liberal” for his vote on that bill. Attack ads, direct mail pieces, and internet ads pointed over and over and over again to that vote.   But on Tuesday night, in a district that many – me included - worried would punish Leek for his courage, instead rejected those attacks.    The remarkable streak continued – every single member who voted yes in the early days of March 2018 had successfully overcome political attacks on that vote, and prevailed.    Every.  Single.  One.

In fairness, the Parkland vote certainly wasn’t the only issue in this race (even if for me, it arguably was), and Leek won for a lot of reasons.  But have no doubt:  one of the central arguments against Leek was his vote on the Parkland bill, and have no doubt, his opponents were counting on that Parkland vote being a reason people rejected him.   And in the end, voters chose to support Leek – even if they didn’t love his vote on that issue.  

Six years after that remarkable moment in the legislature – the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Act remains a model – a model for school safety – a model for bipartisanship – and a model for how to do big things in tough moments.   And that law is a model because guys like Tom Leek took the hard vote – the vote that he probably knew he’d see in a mail piece or TV ad one day – and he took the vote anyways.  

And because folks like Tom Leek set aside conventional political wisdom and took the hard vote, 17 parents and countless others who loved those who were killed can look back and know there was at least a measure of meaning to those whose lives were violently cut short inside Building 12 at the corner of Holmberg Rd and Coral Springs Drive.  

For that, I remain proud as hell that voters continue to reward those in public office who showed the political courage hit the green button to pass the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School Safety Act of 2018, and that is something we should celebrate this week.   

And God willing, we will only see more of it. 

(CS/HB 7026, 2018, final vote)