Fred Guttenberg, the father of slain student Jaime Guttenberg, leaves the courtroom at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Wednesday after Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz pleaded guilty to murder in the 2018 massacre that left 17 dead at a Parkland, Fla., high school. Guttenberg is joining the top ranks of a progressive anti-gun group to promote like-minded political candidates around the country ahead of next year’s midterm elections. He will be a senior adviser to Brady PAC. (AP photo)

WASHINGTON — The father of a 14-year-old girl killed in the 2018 Florida high school shooting massacre announced Thursday that he’s joining the top ranks of an anti-gun violence group to promote like-minded political candidates around the country ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Fred Guttenberg will be a senior adviser to Brady PAC. His daughter Jaime, an aspiring dancer and gymnast, died with 16 others during the Valentine’s Day 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Nikolas Cruz pleaded guilty Wednesday to 17 counts of first-degree murder for that shooting and could face the death penalty during sentencing in January. Guttenberg, who has become a nationally known activist in the years since the shooting, said he visited his daughter’s grave this week and “asked her for guidance. ‘Cause Jaime is my strength.”

“Jaime may only have been 14, but she was the toughest, wisest person I ever knew,” Guttenberg said in an interview. “If you want to know my motivation for why I’m doing this with Brady PAC right now, that’s the reason.”

Brady PAC, formed leading up to 2018’s midterm elections, supports candidates who promote gun violence prevention and spent $5 million during the 2020 election cycle. It has promised to pump millions more into next year’s races.

Guttenberg, a 55-year-old former small business owner, said, “I believe we are one election cycle away from either getting this done, or one election cycle away from losing the chance.”

“We do it now,” he added, “or we never do it.”

Guttenberg noted that Democrats, most of whom agree with him and Brady PAC on top gun issues, control Congress and could hold both chambers after 2022 — even though the party that wins the White House, as Democrats did through Joe Biden in 2020, historically loses seats in the next election.

“I think people need to stop acting like everyone knows what’s going to happen in 2022 and get back to working for what you want to happen,” Guttenberg said. “I want more gun safety candidates elected to the House and the Senate. Period. Full stop. And I think that voters agree with me.”

Cruz killed 14 students and three staff members during a seven-minute rampage through Stoneman Douglas, using an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to shoot victims in hallways and classrooms. Cruz had been expelled from the school a year earlier after a history of threatening, frightening, unusual and sometimes violent behavior that dated to preschool.